by Chris Knopf
“You don’t seem quite college age,” I said to her.
“Ah, that social skills thing you mentioned. No, I’m thirtyeight years old. You think that’s too old to get a degree?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m merely making an observation. Learning at any age is the best thing you can do. I believe that more deeply than I believe any other thing in the world. I feel a perceptive woman like you would agree.”
“Good answer. Buy me another drink.”
I did just that. When the bartender came over and she placed her order, I had another chance to look around at the bar’s clientele. Natsumi noticed, and tapped me on the arm.
“That guy over there with the sideburns,” she said, giving her head a little jerk toward a booth against the wall. “He’s security. The woman with him works in one of the dress shops. I like to go there and pretend I can afford to buy something. It annoys her.”
“So I guess you wouldn’t mind annoying her again.”
She smiled.
“’I’ll gladly introduce you to the security guy. You just have to tell me your last name.”
“Oswald,” I said. “Like the assassin. No relation.”
Her smile widened.
“Natsumi Fitzgerald. Fits me about as well as yours fits you.”
“The sailor?”
“My adopted father. He’s dead. Liked the Jim Beam a little too much.”
“Sorry.”
“Come on,” she said, pulling at my shirtsleeve, “let’s go annoy some people.”
Natsumi lead us over to the booth. I tried to shrink myself into the remotest possible threat. Natsumi ignored the woman and stuck her hand out to the guy.
“Hi, I’m Natsumi. I deal blackjack at Clear Waters. I’ve seen you on the floor.” The guy took her hand cautiously. “My friend John Oswald is looking to get into security, so I thought you might tell him how to go about it. Come over here, John,” she said to me, regaining her grip on my shirt. I offered my hand to the guy and he took it.
“I’ve had some experience in video surveillance,” I told him. “I thought maybe you could use me at the casino.”
The guy nodded. His features, too small for his head, merged seamlessly with his neck. A sparse moustache did little to improve the situation.
“They might. Not my part of the deal, but it wouldn’t hurt to apply.”
“So just go to HR?” Natsumi asked.
I dug the crumpled napkin out of my back pocket.
“Ron Irving?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said the guy, in the clipped way you often hear out on Long Island, not so much in Connecticut. “That’s the guy. Retired state bull. You don’t got any kinda record, do you? Anything more’n a parking ticket is an automatic disqualification.”
“I’m good there,” I said. “Drive like a senior citizen.”
The guy and his companion, who wore a wedding ring that didn’t match his, looked ready for us to retreat back to the bar. I thanked him, and he looked satisfied with himself for helping a fellow human being.
“Your friend?” Natsumi prompted me.
“Oh, yeah, I think I got a friend who works with you guys. Lost track of him years ago. Last name’s Chalupnik.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed.
“We got three of them. Don’t know ’em personally,” he said. “What’s the first name?”
“We just called him Munk, like in chipmunk,” I said, stalling for time as I searched my battered brain for the names I’d found on the web. “It was a funny name I think, like Bela?”
One in three chance.
“We got a Bela,” he said. “And a Radek and a Dano, like Hawaii Five-O. Bela’s the old man. Got the kids into the family business.”
I ached to pull out the police sketch of the man in the trench coat, but discipline won out.
“That’s great,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll ask Mr. Irving about him.”
With that, I withdrew, Natsumi following. We reclaimed our stools, reserved by the half-consumed drinks on the bar.
“See, that was easy,” I said, “and only vaguely disruptive.”
“Chipmunk? You made that up.”
“You don’t have nicknames in Japan?”
“I don’t know. We left when I was three years old. The kids here called me slope-head. But that’s probably not what you mean.”
“Do you think your friend in IT could get me a picture of Bela?” I asked. “That would nail it.”
She narrowed her eyes in the same way as the security guy. Probably for the same reason.
“You really want to find this friend of yours,” she said.
I tried to look nonchalant.
“Not really. It’s just the way I am. Get on a mission and can’t stop. And there’s this social anxiety thing. Worse since the bang on the head. It was very generous of you to help me. A good deed.”
“I try to do one a day. I’ll get you his picture. Then how do I get it to you?”
I took a cocktail napkin out of a stack on the bar and wrote down an email address.
“You send it here. Which will give me your email address, and then we can communicate. Unless you don’t want to.”
“I think I do. Jury’s still out. My mother tells me I think too much. Do you believe that’s possible? What do you think she means?”
“I’ve been accused of the same thing. I used to call it hyper-analysis syndrome. Tell your mother you love her and to worry about something else, like the yield curve or invasive species.”
Natsumi was very expressive, but I found her face difficult to read. Some of it was the nature of her features, different from mine and outside my familiar experience. I thought it would be easy to overestimate her bright-eyed congeniality, or misinterpret the occasional look of confusion, or marvel. I wondered if I could get her into an in-depth, one-on-one interview to better document her facial cues.
“What?” she said.
“What do you mean, what?”
“Why are you looking at me?”
“I have nowhere more productive to look.”
“Is that a compliment? I’m not sure,” she said.
“Since you’ve already admitted to thinking too much, I was trying to divine what those thoughts were by your facial gestures and body language. I think unsuccessfully.”
“I’m trying to do the same thing with you, with about as much success,” she said.
I felt the room close in on me, not the first time that evening. I felt exposed and intrigued at the same time. It was hard to trace the cause of the spatial disorientation, the potential uncovering of the man in the trench coat, or the likeable Asian woman, who seemed to possess a unique talent for dislodging my reflexive self-defense.
“I better get home,” I said. “I’m getting really tired.”
“Not the company, I hope,” she asked.
“Hardly. You’ve been extremely helpful and kind. It’s just getting late for me and that beer took a toll.”
“The world’s cheapest date.”
I paid the bill and made to leave. We shook hands and she repeated her intention to get me the information I was looking for.
“Not just for your sake,” she said. “You could be interesting to have around. I like the people I work with, but I’m easily bored.”
“I might be a lot more boring than you think,” I said.
“Too late, John. You’ve already proved otherwise.”
CHAPTER 10
As I drove back to my rental house, I pondered a paradox. Contrary to my claims of social ineptitude, I actually had extraordinary talents in that area. Though only when used as a professional tool, a way to extract information from the unsuspecting, preying on people’s natural desire to help out the confused and befuddled. In essence, exploiting people’s better nature.
It wasn’t hard to see the ethics challenge, but it didn’t matter so much when the quarry was identifying toothpaste preferences, or cable TV bundling options. This was different.
This time the pursued was murderous and the pursuer no less inclined.
A complicating factor was an original truth. I was socially awkward when the intent was purely social. I never felt comfortable with the mating and networking dance, always the twitchy, hyperactive geek, and like Natsumi, easily bored by the mingling crowds I often found myself trapped within.
Florencia rescued me from all that. Took me under her wing, not to tutor so much as protect and defend against the vagaries of casual discourse.
Another reason for me to love her, as if I needed one.
THE NEXT morning, my computer woke me up with a gentle ping. It took a while to gather the significance as I slowly emerged from sleep, foggier than usual after the long casino and Sail Inn experience.
I looked through a dull blur at the computer screen. A dialog box was open. I put on my glasses and saw that MrPbody had an email message waiting. I opened the program. It was from EichenWrite.
“Thank you, but a week was pretty stingy,” he wrote, “though you got him softened up. He was sure you were going to whack him. Inspired a confessional mood. When the cops showed up, he was part relieved, part annoyed, thinking he’d spilled too many beans. I got most of what I needed, and now there’s another court case. My editor sent back the advance I had to give up, so I guess I owe you. Which is why I didn’t share our contact info, namely this email box, with the retired cop. He’s VERY VERY curious about you. Tried to lean on me. I said, hello? Ever heard of protected sources? Go ahead, subpoena my ass. First amendment is my middle name. I got the ACLU on speed dial. FYI, the cop’s name is Shelly Gross, which you might already know. I told him the best I could do was relay a message. No guarantees, and that’s the truth. BTW, who the fuck ARE you?”
After reading the email, I fell back in bed. I’ll answer, I thought. But not right now. I had to figure out what I wanted to write, and anyway, never good to look too eager. And there was the matter of debilitating exhaustion. I needed at least another hour in bed, collecting myself. Assessing the situation.
Ten minutes later, the chime went off again. It was Evelyn.
“Things are moving quickly at the agency,” she wrote. “Best to check in when you get a chance. Call me. Too complicated for email. Still nothing from Maddox. They’re about to move you into cold cases. A little premature if you ask me, but he promised to keep his hand in, which doesn’t mean anything as far as I know, but I appreciate the thought. I hope you’re feeling okay, though I bet you’re not. Don’t push things too hard. Slows the healing process. By official standards, the trauma is still pretty fresh. I know, I know, who cares about officials.”
I turned off the alert sounds and fell back in bed once again. Evelyn’s caution, as usual, was timely and directly put. Though sure to be ignored, after I had a chance to rest a bit and gather myself.
There’s a difference, I said to myself, between feeling like hell and losing the ability to function. As long as I could operate reasonably well, the feeling-like-hell part would just have to stay out of the way.
THE ONLY treatment for fatigue that ever worked for me was generating more activity. So I forced myself into the shower and a fresh set of clothes and set out in the Subaru. The project I had in mind might have been premature, but it was foremost in my thoughts, and thus the easiest to undertake.
My first stop was the lumberyard. I bought several sheets of half-inch birch plywood which I had cut to tight specifications. I also bought some three-quarter inch poplar stock, hinges and some heavy wire mesh. I threw it all in the Outback and drove to Gerry’s shop at the clock factory where I did an inventory of tools and fastening options, like wood screws and heavy-duty staplers. I went back out to a hardware store to fill in the gaps, then returned to the shop.
I wasn’t much of a hobbyist, but I’d learned to use shop tools during a market research study for a company who wanted to downgrade material quality as a cost-saving measure. It turned out to be a fatal error on their part, but I got to generate a lot of sawdust and achieve another barely mastered skill without suffering serious injury.
I spent the rest of the day drawing out my idea and planning the optimum cuts. It was satisfying work, as Gerry promised it would be, using my hands and calculating skills, which seemed to have developed past arithmetic and into primitive geometry. A self-taught version, to be sure, as I had to draw multiple lines and make models out of cardboard in order to realize basic shapes and dimensions.
Luckily, it wasn’t that complex a design, well within the capabilities of an ambitious thirteen-year-old.
In a few hours I had a rectangular box, approximately a foot wide and eighteen inches high, and four feet long. There were two doors in the middle of the box, one a solid piece of ply, and one Plexiglas, which you opened and closed by sliding it in and out of a slot on the top. The box was mounted on a two-by-four structure raised about four feet off the ground. A fairly primitive device, but there was little need for additional complexity.
By now, it was midafternoon. I had another goal for the day, but was unsure if I should try it in broad daylight. On the drive back to my rental house, I decided I would, and pulled into the driveway leading up to the empty gravel pit next door. What I saw would make an ideal movie set for the apocalypse. Rusted metal-sheathed buildings, rotting, partially disemboweled trucks, a cratered lunar landscape devoid of life. I found a building I assumed housed the original offices for the complex and tried to look through the translucent, pitted window glass, with no success.
I put on a pair of surgical gloves and worked my way around the building, testing doors and windows until I found a door with a smashed-in glass panel. The door opened into a dark hallway I lit with a small flashlight. The floor was covered in a tangle of weathered, dusty litter. I followed the hall to a large, open room I assumed was once the reception area for the offices. Now it was just an empty space, but for a mattress, scattered beer cans and pornographic magazines. It was windowless and black as pitch. The little flashlight was barely up to the task as I surveyed all the space. After I was satisfied with what I saw, I left and went back to my house.
I booted up the computer and placed rush orders for a few other components from several different suppliers. Thus involved, I forgot that Evelyn had asked me to call her. When I did, the first thing she asked was how I was feeling.
“Like hell, but it’s manageable. I had a beer last night.”
“You lush.”
“If you really want to distort reality, I recommend a gunshot to the head. What’s with the agency?”
“I think an offer could come sometime next week. Bruce can see I’m really uneasy about it, but he’s been great. He assumes I’m feeling over my head and he’s right. He doesn’t know it’s not really my decision. I’m half afraid hesitating will breed suspicion. I know that’s paranoid, but I can’t help it.”
“I do keep putting you in untenable situations,” I said.
“You think?”
“I just need to do some housekeeping. I’ll make it as quick as possible and let you know when I’m ready. Keep a close eye on your mailbox.”
After hanging up, I went to the computer and dove back into web searches and online purchasing until I was too tired to stay awake, and thus successfully hammered my jittery brain into blessed unconsciousness.
DURING THE night another ping from the computer woke me up. It was an email from Natsumi Fitzgerald with an attachment labeled “Chapulnik.Bela.jpeg.” Before reading her note, I clicked on the attachment.
Could I know for sure? I asked myself. Probably not, but did it feel right? Absolutely.
I knew all the research on eyewitness testimony, on faulty memory, on the uncertain reliability of certainty. Yet, I felt I knew, without a doubt, that this was the man in the trench coat.
I took out the police sketch. Another person might not have seen the resemblance, which for some reason encouraged me. What I saw were the essentials—the set of his jaw, rigid, and slightly skewed to the lef
t. The tone of his skin and blemishes on his cheeks. As a researcher, I also knew the power of the subconscious to capture and store information more dependably than the conscious mind, unimpaired as it was by the warp of cognition, the imposition of bias and preference. It was information you felt, rather than thought, a feeling that rarely let me down.
I fed the name into the people search programs and harvested all the necessary vital statistics—age (52), physical address, phone number, police record (none) and employment history. He’d been in security at Clear Waters for ten years. Before that had similar gigs at Electric Boat, the submarine builder in Groton across the river from New London, and before that in the U.S. Navy Shore Patrol.
I copied all the information into an email and sent it to myself where I could access it with my smartphone. Then I went back to my project, absorbed by the details of the plan, a continuous stream of if/then’s running through my mind, waylaying whatever emotional distractions threatened to burble up from that helpful, but often nettlesome subconscious.
I STARTED the surveillance several days later, after all the other preparations were in place. I made an educated guess that Chalupnik, a ten-year veteran at the casino, would have a shift covering peak periods of activity, roughly from midafternoon to ten at night. So I started to cruise by his sixties-era white ranch house in nearby Waterford at various times before and after ten-thirty P.M. It was a crudely imprecise approach, but I dared not push Natsumi to make further inquiries, however sympathetic she might be. I had written back to thank her, and she rather plainly expressed the hope that I’d stop at her table sometime, and that was that.
On the third night, I drove down the street in time to see the taillights of a generic Japanese sedan parked in Bela’s driveway flick off. A man got out of the car, and as I passed by I could almost make a positive ID under the dim and shadowy outdoor lighting. I noted the time and continued on.
It wasn’t until two nights later that I had another hit, this one more convincing. Still, I gave it another week to be sure I had the basic pattern established.
