“All right, do it,” Hedde said and handed her grandfather’s straight razor to Sorsha, who accepted it as if it would wheel in her hand and slash her.
“Holy shit,” one of the girls gasped as Sorsha cut off a thick lock of hair and offered it to Hedde, who quickly fashioned it into a circle that she lowered around the prophylactic before laying the two objects on the dirt.
“This will bind his seed,” Hedde said as she pulled a slim flask from her bag. “He won’t be able to get you pregnant.” She unscrewed the lid and took a swig of tequila, eyes watering before she lowered her face over the fetish and dribbled the liquid from between her puckered lips.
“Can I have a hit?” Some wit.
“Shut up.” Some frightened rabbit.
The circle shifted around her when she pulled out the book of matches and struck one alight.
“Don’t you need to say anything?” Sorsha asked.
“No,” Hedde said.
She lowered the match to the bundle, and a blue flame licked across the alcohol for a brief moment before the hair flared brightly. Everyone recoiled from the smell.
“They used to burn people like you in Salem,” Susie-with-a-heart said.
“No they didn’t.” Hedde looked up from beneath her bangs. She stood, lifting her book bag onto her shoulder and taking a step towards the taller girl. The in-crowd shuffled back. “They used to hang us.”
The school bell rang and postponed the confrontation. Hedde moved with the swirling mass of students back towards the low, brick building. Among them but not of them, so consumed with her own thoughts and the lingering awfulness of the tequila on her tongue, that she failed to see her mom’s green Jeep screeching into the parking lot.
- 2 -
Cat was approaching the entrance to the high school when the metal double doors boomed open and a horde of teenage boys piled out, a singular mass with dozens of arms, legs and mouths. They streamed around her on either side as she frantically looked for a familiar face.
“Have you seen Hedde?” She asked a passing boy, touching his arm. “Hedde Edgar?”
He shook his head and exchanged loaded looks with a buddy as they continued on. Cat was reaching for the door handle when she heard a burst of cruel laughter behind her, and she looked over her shoulder to see half a dozen older boys looking at her with vulpine grins.
What the hell is happening?
She took a deep breath, fighting down the growing paranoia that was eclipsing her ability to think. She felt muscles pull in her back as she grabbed both doors and dragged them open, stepping through into the dark entrance hall. The bank of overhead fluorescents was buzzing ineffectively. A step ladder had been set up beneath them, but she saw no sign of a custodian. She cast a look back and caught the red glow of the EXIT sign above the doors she had just passed through.
“Can I help you?”
Cat turned too quickly and blurted, “What?”
An older woman with a horrendous pile of immobile hair leaned down to the gap at the bottom of the window and repeated the question.
“Yes, I need to find my daughter immediately,” she said.
“And you are?”
“Cat…Catherine Edgar. Her mother.”
“And your daughter is?”
“Hedde Edgar,” she said, placing both hands on the counter and forcing herself not to scream.
“And the reason you need to—”
There’s been a headband.
“There’s been a family emergency,” Cat said. A manic hilarity threatened her, and she wondered how Miss Beehive 1962 would react to the word HEADBAND. She felt her smile grow plastic as the woman moved several papers aside and produced a clip board with a sign-in sheet.
“Sign in here.”
“Do you have a pen?”
- 3 -
Cat stalked the halls of Rifton High, making no effort to hide her desperation. The few students not in class gave her wide berth. One student noted to a friend that Mrs. Edgar, “Looked intense.”
The innocent rows of bright blue lockers and the windowed doors into empty classrooms screamed silent threats at Cat. She knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop thinking about those disturbed boys in Colorado who went on a shooting rampage at their school. Of course Lew wouldn’t have sent her the message HEADBAND because of something as prosaic as children murdering children.
A detached, clinical part of Cat’s mind was stunned at how unhinged Lew’s coded message had left her. There was only one reason that it could have stepped on the accelerator and roared past worry, past fear and straight into panic. She believed that her family was in mortal danger. She believed that somewhere on the other side of the world, where she could not help him, her husband’s life was in jeopardy. All of her jokes about his past life in Foreign Service were laid bare, exposed for the feeble things they were, fig leaves pathetically draped over her very real fear. Lew is in Russia, for God’s sake.
The cafeteria doors were up ahead and Cat paused to get control. She didn’t want to frighten Hedde.
- 4 -
Study hall was an unending series of sniffles, squeaking chairs and the occasional calls for silence. Sitting alone in a far corner of the cafeteria, Hedde was scratching her pencil back and forth across a page of algebra notes as her mind entered a familiar fugue. When she was younger, she called this state her “listening place.” Now she didn’t bother to name it, only welcomed it when it came over her.
When Cat strode in and saw half a dozen kids scattered about the lunch tables, surrounded by books and papers, Hedde dropped her head as if to hide.
“Hedde,” she called out. Heads rose around the room, looking up at the odd disturbance. “Hedde, come here right now.”
Oh my God, what is she doing? Hedde thought as she hurried to gather her things, hoping to escape the tittering scrutiny of her classmates with as little damage as possible.
“Give me some Hedde,” someone sang out in a falsetto voice, and she ducked her face, hurrying away before she realized her mistake and spun back to snatch her notebook from the table.
She paused a moment before slapping the notebook shut.
There, in her own broken handwriting, the scribbles had decided to form a word: MOM.
- 5 -
Cat pulled out of the parking lot and onto Milk Street, Hedde safely in the back seat. A confused roar filled her ears, and she struggled to remember the protocol she was supposed to follow.
The bank. A lock box at the bank.
She turned left at the light, checking her rearview mirror for anything out of order. Not that she had any idea what to look for.
Hedde was listing a litany of complaints, but Cat could barely hear them as she struggled to choke back a sob.
CHAPTER SEVEN
- 1 -
The bank was in a small town a few miles from the Vermont border. A one-story brick affair on a street lined with many other one-story buildings. The tallest structure Hedde could see was a steeple dominating the circular park in the center of town. She felt a pressure growing in her chest, even worse than she felt at home. A trapped feeling, imagining a long life of work in a FedEx store, or waiting tables at a sports bar. The screaming need to escape, always thrumming below the surface in Hedde’s thoughts, was bad enough where they lived in Westchester County. In this burg it burned in her like a fever.
“Here we are,” her mother said.
Like most kids, Hedde was well-attuned to the emotional state of her parents. Something in her mother’s voice sounded like a guitar string stretched to breaking, and while she hadn’t expected constructive responses to her earlier complaints, the complete lack of explanation left her cold.
Cat pulled the Jeep into one of the diagonal spots on the street and opened the door. “Stay right here,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
“It’s El Mysterioso, isn’t it?”
Cat tensed as if expecting a blow. “Don’t call him that.”
“Ar
e we leaving dad?”
“No, honey. Never.”
Cat turned around and her melting, plastic smile sent tendrils of unease worming through Hedde’s stomach.
“I’ll be right back,” Cat said.
The slamming car door seemed to echo for several minutes in the quiet.
Her hair’s a mess. She never goes out like that, and there’s a big stain on the ass of her jeans. Not to mention that she looks batshit crazy.
“Screw him,” Hedde said, jamming the earbud back into place and slumping into the corner of her seat.
- 2 -
Cat stood in the privacy booth with the heavy length of the metal safety deposit box on the counter in front of her. It was a combination lock, not a key lock, and it took her three tries before she rotated the numbers to the correct position. She felt like Pandora on the verge of a terrible mistake.
“Lew, I’m not ready,” she complained to the emptiness. The closed box offered no answers.
Her left hand crept up to her mouth. “Like a Band-Aid,” she muttered, and pulled the top of the box open.
“Oh God,” she said.
A black .38 revolver lay on top of several envelopes. The greasy, metal truth of the gun took her breath away. It was an inelegant thing, demonstrating a pure, functional ugliness. It was not her life.
She reached out, almost dazed, and picked up the weapon in her right hand.
The surprising weight of the gun was undeniable. All of this is really happening. Six brass shells winked from inside the cylinder. The words Smith & Wesson were stamped into the metal along the short barrel.
She placed it next to the box.
The envelope beneath it had her name typed on it, so she opened it and dumped the contents on the counter.
A New Hampshire driver’s license with her picture on it carried the name STELLA DUMAIN and she started to cry, smiling in spite of herself. Stella? She thought. Really, Lew? Stella? He hated the film and refused to see a stage performance. “Brando talks like he has a mouth full of oatmeal,” was his refrain every time she brought it up. She felt his jest in the choice of the name. It was as if he were standing in the small privacy booth with her.
A US passport and two credit cards were also under the same name, as was a typed note. She set that aside and lifted a thick envelope from the box, knowing it was cash before she opened it.
“Sweet Jesus,” she muttered, thumbing through the bills. She flashed briefly to an image of herself in a glittering dress on the arm of a gangster. This was not a life of groceries and copywriting and a daughter who was secretly smoking cigarettes.
She stuffed the envelope into an inner pocket of her coat and picked up the folded note.
CAT,
1. RUN FAST. STAY ALIVE.
The note began to tremble in her hand and Cat stilled herself with an effort.
2. NO SAFETY ON GUN. POINT AND SHOOT. DO NOT HESITATE.
“Oh God, Lew, what is this?”
3. DESTROY ALL CELL PHONES. CAN TRACK BY GPS. THEY ARE LISTENING. USE THIS PHONE ONLY.
An older model cell phone was in the box.
4. GO TO GERARD’S. LISTEN TO GERARD. DO NOT LEAVE GERARD’S.
5. DO NOT USE EMAIL. THEY ARE WATCHING.
6. PROTECT YOURSELF. PROTECT OUR BABY.
I LOVE YOU.
LEW
At the bottom of the note was a handwritten sentence, Lew’s jagged penmanship unmistakable.
I AM COMING.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Evgeny rolled onto his back and bellowed, “Zoya!” The effort made his head pound, and he sat up with a groan of effort and a ripping flatulence.
I feel terrible, he thought, a sentiment so common that he barely noticed it anymore.
“Zoya!”
Evgeny staggered to the bathroom of the opulent bedroom to puke in a gold-lined sink and piss in the antique tub. In the silence following his various efforts at excretion, he noticed that the wind had died down, and a glance out the window told him the storm had stopped.
Pulling on a silk kimono, he lumbered towards the stairs and made his way down, hand on the rail for balance.
“Zoya!”
The air downstairs was ice cold and Evgeny felt his balls tighten, forcing him to belt the kimono closed over his massive belly.
The sliding glass door was open.
“Durak,” he muttered. Stupid. He plodded barefoot across the cold floor and was reaching for the door when his foot slipped on slick tiles.
Evgeny fell hard and lay stunned on the floor for nearly a minute before he registered the wet smear he was resting in. He struggled awkwardly to a sitting position and noticed, with dawning horror, the red dripping from his palms.
“Govno,” he swore, staggering upright to see that a trail of blood led out through the sliding door and onto the snow beyond.
Evgeny shut the sliding door and locked it, then lumbered for the phone in his study and discovered why Zoya wasn’t answering him.
The woman’s severed head was resting upright on the desk where his computer should be. Her eyelids had been stapled open, and he recoiled from the dead stare of the milky orbs.
A sudden, massive blow struck him in the chest, and Evgeny clutched himself, squeezing the meat of his chest between white knuckles as he fell into the doorway. He made it three steps into the hall before falling to his knees, his face ashen.
“Pomogi myne,” he whispered. Help me.
Blackness swirled around the edges of his vision as he fumbled for the medical alert bracelet on his left wrist.
His last thought was, Did I push the button? before unconsciousness took him.
CHAPTER NINE
- 1 -
Chambers trailed the pale man along Washington DC’s National Mall, passing a crowd of tourists braving the winter weather. He thought the man might be an albino afflicted with alopecia, rendering him completely hairless. The suit and overcoat contributed to the idea, a faint gray that matched his wintry eyes. Chambers suspected that, seen quickly, the man’s face would be a featureless blur. Not a bad trait for a spy.
“Bierce?”
The pale man turned and Chambers saw the dusty hint of stubble on his brows. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the season. What kind of man shaves off his eyebrows?
“I’m Chambers.”
Neither man offered their hand.
“Have we met?” Bierce asked.
“No.”
Bierce’s gray overcoat hung in neat lines. Chambers wore a beige London Fog. The tourists milling around them displayed a panoply of colors.
“Lewis Edgar is one of yours?” Chambers asked.
Bierce studied the naked branches of a cherry tree as they passed beneath.
“Russian authorities have an all-points out for him in relation to a homicide,” Chambers said. A portly man, he was breathing more heavily than Bierce. “Neighbor found his girlfriend’s severed head as a good morning present and promptly had a heart attack. Emergency arrived and called the police who followed a blood trail through the woods to Edgar’s house. They found the rest of the girlfriend there.”
“Any idea where Edgar is?” Bierce asked with a brief smile. Chambers noticed that his teeth were unusually small and regular.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. They, uh, have an idea he is one of ours.”
“Of course they do,” Bierce said. “We know who they are and they know who we are, and we all go about our business quietly.”
“Until one of ours chops a girl’s head off,” Chambers said, coughing into his hand. He fished out a roll of Hall’s from his pocket and grimaced as he put a lozenge on his tongue. Lemon my ass, he thought.
Bierce stopped and fixed an unblinking gaze on the shorter man.
“Lewis Edgar did not do this. He’s a family man.”
“Speaking of family, the Bureau would like to bring them in. See if Edgar has been in touch.”
Bierce nodded. “By all means.”
“And you’ll call me if he contacts you?” Chambers kept his tone casual, but like many in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he disliked dealing with spooks and all of their shadowy bullshit.
“I’ll be in touch,” Bierce said, turning to leave. A hand on his arm stopped him. Chambers smiled.
“If you were going to bet, you think the Russians will catch him?” Chambers asked.
“I don’t gamble.”
Chambers’s smile widened as he sensed how much his presence offended Bierce. “What I want to know…is Edgar any good?”
Bierce eased his arm free from Chambers’s hand.
“Years ago, he was in Chechnya for a while, but now he buys and sells things and listens for us. He’s a family man, as I said, and has settled into a job suitable to his familial responsibilities.”
“So he’s not gonna get away?”
“He didn’t do this thing.”
“Not what I asked.”
Chambers let the silence stretch out a bit before turning to look up at the Washington Monument. “You know, I barely even notice that thing anymore.”
He walked away and was soon lost in the crowd.
Bierce sat down on an empty bench and thought about the strange call he had received last night immediately after hanging up on Edgar. There had been no voice on the other end, yet Bierce found himself unable to hang up.
Instead, he had listened to the sound of quiet breathing from thousands of miles away.
- 2 -
The decision was made as soon as Chambers walked away, but Bierce remained on the bench. To anyone watching, he was a man unhurried, unworried. Still, when a shadow fell over the bright crowds, he cast a gaze skyward, fighting back a shiver as a cloud slid across the sun.
Mister White: The Novel Page 5
