Coldwater

by Tom Pitts

  Ryan reached down to the cuffs of his dark gray suit, perfectly settled on the contour of his body. The fabric was still flat and neat despite the long hours he’d driven, silent, with the boy in the front seat next to him sleeping most of the way. Melissa hadn’t slept, hadn’t made an attempt to notice the landscape. She’d just sat in the middle of the back seat watching the road ahead of her until they’d arrived there, in the hotel room. Now, she stared at Ryan’s hand. At the edge of his left palm, where his pinky should have been, was a small, mangled bump of flesh. She hadn’t noticed until then. He pulled his cuffs down to his wrists, saw her and the child staring at his scar. Ryan stopped his movement, and the boy looked up, digging his middle fingers into the holes he’d made in his mother’s jeans.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Now, you live your life, and I go to Texas to make sure Victoria Williams thinks you’re dead.”

  His voice cooed into her soundtrack of static—a raspy, whiskey-scorched voice wallowing in the shadowy room. She focused on his eyes, a placid, motionless depth. Then she looked away, peered at the overlapped edges of beige wallpaper in the corners of the room where they were almost invisible.

  “What did you do to your pinky?” the boy asked.

  Melissa squeezed her knees together around the child then winced. “Hey, don’t be rude.”

  Ryan clasped his hands together and leaned forward, toward the boy, a flickering patience at the edges of his lips as he grinned. “Gator took it off.”

  The boy’s eyelids retracted, and the cerulean blue of his irises peered up at Ryan. “An alligator?”

  “That’s right. Chomped it right off while I was walking down the road.”

  The boy scrunched his face, one eye closing almost entirely, the thin white line of lingering tape bent away from his skin. “In Albuquerque?”

  “Yep.”

  “But there are no alligators in Albuquerque.”

  “He was my pet alligator.”

  The boy stopped poking at the seams of his mother’s jeans. “Pet alligator?”

  “Yeah.” Ryan tapped his left leg. “I kept him right here in my pocket.”

  “Alligators are too big to be in your pocket.”

  “He was just little then, and I carried him around with me everywhere I went.”

  “Even to the bathroom?”

  “Even the bathroom.”

  The boy turned to look at his mother and whispered, “Can you take an alligator to the bathroom.”

  Melissa flinched against the child’s movement into the sling around her arm. The finger-length bruises over her neck wimpled when she swallowed. “If it’s your pet, you can take it anywhere you want.”

  The boy snapped his head back toward Ryan. “Where is your alligator now?”

  “Well, the alligator got too big to fit in my pocket, so I had to let him go.”

  “You let him go? Where did you let him go?”

  “I let him go in a swamp far, far away from here, where he would have enough space to be with the other alligators like him.”

  “But why did your alligator bite your finger off?”

  Ryan weighed his response against what the boy and his mother had already been through. “Sometimes, the things that we have in our lives hurt us. And maybe they don’t mean to, but it’s what they do. That’s how we know when to let things go.”

  The child worked his bottom lip back and forth into his mouth, staring at the scar on the Ryan’s hand.

  “Like what my dad did to me and Mom?”

  “Something like that.”

  He looked away from the scar to Ryan’s face. “Can I touch it?”

  Melissa flexed her legs around the boy’s ribs again. “Stop being rude. You don’t ask people things like that.”

  The boy looked down at Ryan’s feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s alright.” Ryan rubbed his palm over the edge of his scarred hand. At times, human touch felt like the annoyance of flies buzzing around his face. Other times, it made him feel like his skin would peel from his body, tear away like thin fabric and all that would be left would be the tightened flex of muscle covering his bones. Once, he’d let a woman take his hands in a cluttered room when he was drunk on absinthe in some dank corner of New Orleans. After just a sweep of her thumbs over his knuckles, the woman flung his hands from hers, the hazy clouds in her blind eyes swirling chaotically and she repeated bokor, bokor, bokor until he rushed out of there.

  He extended his hand to the boy.

  The boy looked up at his mother, who gave Ryan an apologetic look, an expression slightly more relieved than the look of worry on her face. She nodded and the boy moved forward to his hands and knees and reached one hand out to touch the scar. The pressure of the boy’s tiny fingers squeezed at the gnarled flesh.

  “It’s cold,” the boy said. “Does it still hurt?”

  Ryan shook his head. Melissa leaned forward and pressed the forearm of her free arm over her thigh. The boy drew his hand back, a flittering smile on his face. He held his hand up and tucked his smallest digit into his palm. He used his other hand to hold the finger down and observe the four fingers he held out.

  “Alright, you,” Melissa said. “Time for you to take a bath.”

  The boy crawled across the dark green carpet on his hands and knees into the bathroom.

  “How did you know he liked alligators?”

  “I know a lot about you and your son.” Ryan pulled a purse and an envelope from the top of the dresser behind him. “Everything you need to know about your new life is in here.” He held up the envelope. “Birth certificates, social security cards, resume—all the things you need to move forward.” He handed her the envelope and held out the purse. “In here, your license, checkbook, receipts, a little cash. Day-to-day stuff.” He tossed the purse on the bed beside her. “Your back story is written in a narrative so it’s easier for you to absorb. You’ll want to make that sink into your son’s head as much as possible. There are about a dozen pictures for you to keep around. They’re Photoshopped, obviously, but they coincide with the narrative. It helps with the transition, especially for him. The mind will build false memories. That’s all in the envelope.”

  She flicked the corners of the envelope with her thumb then placed it on the bed beside the purse, watching her own movement. Her mother had probably found the letter she’d left, which made worry set in about what might happen if someone else found it. “How many times have you done this, relocation?”

  “Enough to know that everything will be alright as long as you stick to the guidelines I told you about.”

  “Roy can’t find me here?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Neither will Victoria.”

  Melissa rubbed her shoulder. “I never thought I’d live in Oregon.”

  “The important thing is that you’re living.”

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow you go to your new apartment. A woman named Annabelle will pick you up and help with the rest of your transition. You’re safe now.”

  “Thank you, for all that you’ve done. I’m not sure why you decided to help me.”

  “You reminded me of someone I wasn’t able to help.” He stood to leave the room and looked down on her. “This is where you are, and you can never go home.”

  As he left her in the room, he thought about her question. How many times have you done this? Never. In seventeen relocations, he’d never betrayed a client, and he wouldn’t have, but a week after Victoria Williams’ bodyguard Wendell hired him to relocate Roy, they decided to add duties to the job. Victoria wanted assurance that Roy would be in the clear for what he’d done. She wanted Melissa and her son relocated, too. The type of relocation that Ryan didn’t hire himself out for.

  He made his way to the barren interstate that extended east toward the cities he’d already been to, where he�
�d completed this process before, undoing the ties that cinched the helpless to their mistakes or other terrors they couldn’t escape. Despite the hours he’d spent driving Melissa and her son to Oregon from New Mexico, Ryan could still feel the tension in his hands from his meeting with Roy, the smell of the bar where he’d found him—liquor and sweat on Roy’s skin.

  Ryan had made arrangements through Wendell to pick Roy up at the bar where he worked as a bouncer. He found Roy outside the door on a chair under the light of the bar picking at the thin scabs from the fingernail wounds Melissa had left on his arms when she’d gasped for breath and tried to fight him off. An hour out of town, Roy made the call to his stepmother to let her know that he was safe, that he’d be in touch in a few weeks. When he hung up, Ryan wrapped a thin steel cable around his throat.

  Ryan could still taste the dust in the dry air he’d breathed when Roy was beneath him, his knee between Roy’s shoulder blades, the cable taught around his hands. He’d wanted Roy to feel how much damage was being done. Wire would have cut through, would have made it too quick, and Roy wouldn’t have had the chance to tap against Ryan’s forearms. As if that was an appropriate call to mercy. Ryan had seen Melissa’s back, the eggplant shade of bruising in giant patches the size of continents that Roy’s pounding fists left in their voyage. I guess you can only get it up for your stepmother, she’d said to Roy before it started. On the ground, Ryan had pulled the life from Roy, let it seep into the air and drift above him, where the vibrant light of the stars shined down on Roy’s ending.

  If he had done everything he was told, Melissa and her son would be dead, and Roy Williams would be alive, waiting for everything to clear before he could find another woman to damage. If Ryan had done everything he was told, he wouldn’t be driving to Dallas to lie to Victoria Williams about what he’d done with her stepson.

  In the darkness of the highway, Ryan looked ahead to the sky—the foggy glow of the next city hovering in the distance. Headlights on the other side of the median crested the hill he was approaching, like glinting eyes rising out of brackish water. He shifted his focus to the white line separating the shoulder lane. The world was nothing more than a swamp full of alligators—motionless predators lurking in murky water that the helpless were trying to wade through.

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  Chapter 1

  FUNERALS MAKE MY EYES WATER. Don’t get me wrong, not in the ‘Oh, he was a lovely fellah taken from us too soon’ sense. That stuff, I can handle. Old ladies with waterbag legs shoving egg-mayonnaise sandwiches at you, I can just about manage. Slipping them in the pocket beside the scoosh bottle is no problem for me. That type, they never listen to a word you say anyway. Fire out ‘Is that right?’, or ‘Really? No, really?’, and they’re happy as Larry. Just don’t stray into the ‘And how’s your Finlay doing in New Zealand?’ minefield. Uh-uh. That can spell catastrophe.

  It’s details like cause of death that have me filling up. Send me reaching for the twelve-year-old Macallan they roll out for such occasions. And hitting it hard. Not just because that’s what drinkers do. But because I know that, in my racket, it doesn’t look good to be moved by things like funerals and death.

  It’s when death comes so close to home, stamps on your doorstep, then invites itself in that I wince. Really wince. I mean, who wouldn’t wince at something like this?

  ‘Gus. Gusgo. Gusie boy…’

  The skill of the man, pure piss-artistry, to make poetry with my name like that.

  ‘Gus, did you hear what happened before the…you know…?’ Malky Conroy, one of Edinburgh’s widest gobshites, weighed his hands out in the air like he had hold of a mortar launcher.

  ‘Booka-booka,’ it was a pathetic attempt at gangster patter.

  I tried to keep my tone serious. I mean, we were talking about a man’s death here. A man I barely knew, granted. I had met him twice, tops. But out of respect to his father I wasn’t going to mess about at Billy Boy’s funeral.

  ‘It’s the noise a shotgun makes,’ said Malky, ‘when it goes off, like.’

  I gave him a nod, straightened my back. ‘Got ya.’ I tipped back the last of my Red Eye laced coffee, crushed the Styrofoam cup.

  For reasons best kept between Billy and the grave, the poor lad found himself on the wrong end of a sawn-off shotgun one evening. One evening, sounds so civilised, doesn’t it? Not in the least. Unless you call finding a lad, barely into his twenties, with both barrels emptied in his face, civilised.

  That’s the sight that greeted some old biddie walking her Westie at the foot of Arthur’s Seat one morning. The official verdict was suicide, but nobody was buying that.

  ‘Like I was saying,’ Malky crouched over, leaned into my lapels, ‘before they, like…’ He tried to whisper but in his pissed state it came out too loud. I moved my face away from the gobs of spit he flung from his mouth. ‘Well, you know what they did in the end. But before that, there was…’

  Malky straightened himself and shuffled back a few steps. His Hush Puppies squeaked on the church hall’s laminate flooring. And then he did it. I couldn’t believe he did it, but he did…he touched the side of his nose and gave me a little wink.

  It seemed a moment like no other. Make this a movie—that’s your Oscar clip right there. He felt on form, in his own mind. This was the juiciest slice of gossip he’d had in years and he itched to serve it up.

  He shuffled again, got right up close. God, he looked rough, like Johnny Cash circa 2008. A white ring of dried spit sat around Malky’s mouth, catching in the corners, like the Mekong Delta…Jeez, you could have stripped the Forth Bridge with this guy’s breath.

  ‘Now, Gus, you never heard it from me,’ he said, ‘but I know for a fact there was…’ he looked over his shoulder, and then, he did it again, winked, ‘there was torture, his father told me so.’

  ‘Spill it, Malky,’ I said. Immediately, I regretted this, he belched up a wet sliver of lager-perfumed bile onto my tie. ‘Man, be careful there,’ I yelled, loosening the knot and tugging the wet loop of cloth over my head. ‘It’s ruined, Malky!’

  ‘Sorry, it’s the emotion.’

  Emotion my arse, unless they’re selling emotion in six packs these days.

  ‘That poor boy…that poor bloody boy,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Steering a drunk to his point, without having taken a good bucket yourself, is a task and a half. I felt ready to give up, try the sausage rolls. Then he hit me with it.

  ‘His fingernails, and his toenails—they were pulled out,’ said Malky.

  ‘Blood everywhere.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘Can you imagine the pain of that, Gus? Hell, it’s sore as buggery just catching one of those wee hangnails.’

  I didn’t need convincing.

  ‘Plod said it was suicide, Malky.’

  ‘My arse! He moved in some shady circles, our young Billy.’

  I felt loath to admit it, but Malky had my attention now. ‘Was that it, just the nails?’

  ‘If only it was, Gus. God, I hear they did his teeth as well.’

  ‘Pulled them?’

  ‘Think so. They say there wasn’t much to go on after the gun went off in his face. Must have pissed off some serious people.’

  ‘Have the filth any…’ I needed to use the word—no other came to mind—but it stung my lips as it passed, made me sound like a character from The Bill, ‘leads?’

  ‘They could give a tinker’s toss. He was mixing it with gangsters, man. I kid you not, he was into all sorts. One less for them to worry about now, though.’

  ‘What was he into?’ I couldn’t believe
Billy had the marbles to…

  Hang on, it was precisely because he didn’t have any nous that Billy would get involved with this kind of thing.

  Malky shrugged. He remembered who he was talking to. The shoulder movement wasn’t welcome and his frame looked fit to collapse before me. I felt glad, really. I’d no desire to hear any more. It sounded like a tragedy of the type to make you want to pack up and leave this troubled city.

  As if I needed to look for reasons.

  Chapter 2

  I KNEW GUS DURY WHEN…when? When he held down a job? When he still had a wife? When he never drank himself to oblivion every night? I knew that’s what they said, once Billy got put in the ground, and everyone ended up back at Col’s pub.

  The Wall, or the Holy Wall as Col’s mates called it, is a bit different to the usual Edinburgh watering hole. There’s no polished granite bar, Baccardi Breezers, or rocket salad on the menu. Down at heel is the way the ad agency ponytails might describe the Holy Wall. The floor’s linoleum, the seats, PVC. There are so many layers of nicotine in the joint you’d get a decent rollie out the woodchips. It’s rough beyond belief. Just my style.

  The name suits too; you see Col has faith. The Big Faith. And faith in me. Don’t know why, he just does. He says he sees something in me. I suspect it’s the Grouse and Black. Col doesn’t drink, but for me it’s a full-time job.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about how Billy…you know, went, Col. Really very sorry,’ I mumbled, broke up my words and choked on ciggie smoke. This was something I’d wanted to say from the heart, but it got slopped out. ‘Malky—y’know the wideo—he gave me the rundown. I’m so sorry, Col. Really very sorry.’