Face Blind

by Lance Hawvermale

  Out of habit, Mira turned to make sure Luke was near, but he was already racing by her, ambling after Gabe. Mira matched Ben’s long strides, and when the emergency-services dispatcher finally answered, Mira was momentarily surprised to hear herself addressed in Spanish.

  Her mental lag lasted only a second before she called herself a dummy and offered the phone to Ben. “Forgot that not everyone speaks English.”

  As Ben accepted the phone, weaving between the shelves in a jog, he said, “Did you know that China will soon become the number-one English-speaking country in the world?”

  “And why does that matter now?”

  “Just came to mind, that’s all.” He put the phone to his ear and was introducing himself when someone screamed.

  Mira turned as she ran. Near the front of the store, a woman cried out. A man shouted something Mira didn’t understand, and two voices responded to him.

  “Go!” Ben yelled, planting a hand in the center of her back and shoving her forward. “Go, go, go!”

  Mira ran.

  Just ahead, her brother and Gabe vanished behind a display of cookbooks. Mira chased them, suddenly finding time to be afraid. Wearing the Danger Cap when you crossed the street was one thing, but wearing it when running from a murderer was another.

  She turned the corner in time to see Luke disappear through a curtained doorway, above which was a sign that said something about los empleados. Assuming this was an employees-only area and hoping it led to a back door, she increased speed and burst through the curtain without bothering to see if Ben was keeping up. She hadn’t run in ages. She’d done an aerobics class last year but hated it. Her lungs now collected back taxes.

  Gabe had spotted the door: SALIDA. Luke ran toward it in his ungraceful way, arms pumping with exaggerated motions, cheeks puffing in and out.

  Mira dodged a startled worker with an armful of magazines. Behind her, Ben yelled into the phone. Though his Spanish made little sense to Mira, his distress was unmistakable.

  Gabe hit the steel door, blasting it wide. Once outside, he held it open for Luke, who shuttled through with Mira so close she could smell his deodorant. She couldn’t help but wonder if Tilanna would’ve chosen an escape pod like this or if she would’ve turned and attacked. For a moment Mira wanted to do just that. After all, they outnumbered him four to one. But her fear outweighed her courage. For now.

  She ran into a paved lot behind the store, the Dumpsters casting hulking shadows under the bug-swarmed lights.

  “Over here!”

  Mira followed Gabe’s voice.

  He led them around the side of the building. When Luke dropped off the pace, the others slowed to keep him in the formation. Mira swallowed mouthfuls of city-scented air.

  She looked back.

  A figure moved under the lights of the parking lot. It might have been anyone.

  Mira returned her attention to the business of running, doing her part to maintain the pace that Gabe set for them. Together they fled along the sidewalk. Storefronts flashed by. People looked at them as they passed, stepping clear as they put a full block behind them. Tilanna might not have retreated like this, but her reason was a simple lack of anywhere to run. As Ben had written, Mars had no hideouts, and if it did, they were hidden well, indeed. Calama, on the other hand, had countless crannies and—more important—people.

  Mira stalled out. Her muscles were molten. The others put on the brakes. Ben sucked air and didn’t sound well. Gabe’s hair was stuck to his face with hot sweat. Of all of them, Luke appeared the most ready to go another round, his eyes wide as he looked back and watched for their pursuer.

  “Almost there,” Gabe said.

  They staggered under a restaurant awning, the patio full of outdoor diners and a roaming guitar player. Gabe found an empty table in the middle and fell into the chair.

  The others did the same. They sat there breathing hard, eyes on the path behind them.

  No one came.

  Mira glanced around. Women in summer dresses and enviable shoes dined with husbands or lovers or girlfriends, somehow unable to hear the heartbeat that rang so loudly in Mira’s ears. Lanterns burned on hooks around the patio. The guitarist played a salsa version of “The Way You Look Tonight.”

  “Where is he?” Luke whispered in between breaths.

  Ben coughed. “Maybe he … went back to hell.”

  They waited and watched.

  In the distance rose the sound of sirens.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Buenas noches,” Ben said to the cop outside, then closed the motel door.

  “I’ve never been under police protection before,” Mira said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Luke emerged from the restroom, drying his hands in his deliberate way. “Is Gabe in jail?”

  Ben shook his head. “You don’t worry yourself about our fair Mr. Traylin. We all took our turn with the police. They’ll bring him back when they’re done.”

  “I didn’t get a turn. Why didn’t I get to talk to them?”

  “How about you and I just plop our fannies down here and see what’s goin’ down on the fourth rock from the sun?”

  “Tilanna’s having twins.”

  “So you say. But she only recently discovered she was pregnant. I reckon we have a lot of time to kill before the big event.” He sat down on one of the room’s two beds. The suite’s adjoining room boasted the same configuration. The curtains were the color of a tea stain, and there was no continental breakfast, but Ben figured that it was upscale as far as safe houses were concerned. Officer Fontecilla, who seemed to be tiring of these blundering Americans, had relocated them to this Bates Motel on the edge of Calama. Ben had slept in worse. It was true.

  Luke plopped down beside him. “Will there be explosions in the book?”

  “Don’t know. What is it you’re wanting to explode?”

  “The rebel hideout!”

  “Ah. Well, those nasty Kanyri certainly deserve such a fate, but I’m not so sure how well things blow up on Mars.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oxygen. Fire needs air to burn. For all I know, there’s plenty of it in the Martian atmosphere to cause a king-sized detonation, but we’ll have to consult somebody smarter than us to make sure. We don’t want to get our science wrong and face angry e-mails from readers who know better. Assuming that we have any readers, which sometimes is a big assumption.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “But we can worry about that boring old research later. For now, let’s assume that we can blow the holy living hell out of those bandits. What do you say?”

  “I say rock on!”

  “Great. The next question is … is Tilanna going to do this all by herself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Friends. She’s going to need some companions to make this a proper adventure. Just look at us sitting right here. Is Gabe out there fighting the Martian all by himself? Am I writing this book alone?”

  “No.”

  “That’s right. We’ve got a gang. Every literary hero worth his quest has got to get himself a gang. Or in this case, get herself a gang.”

  “Like a band of heroes?”

  “Precisely, dear Watson.”

  “Who’s Watson?”

  “A different tale altogether. Let’s just concentrate on this gang. Who should she get first?”

  “Um…” Luke flicked his chin with his finger as he considered it. “Maybe she meets one of Dycar’s friends.”

  “Friends? From what I recall, the man made more enemies than compadres.”

  “What about the old man?”

  “Vanchette? Yeah, I suppose he might still have a part to play, though I never really thought about it till now…”

  Through all of this, Ben noted Mira on his periphery. She sat near the window, blond hair partially in her face, looking out at the detritus behind the motel, her thoughts certainly not on Mars but somewhere much closer to the big blue marble.
“You okay over there?” he asked her.

  She broke contact with her reflection in the window. “Okay? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. At least I think I am.”

  “I’ve seen a man killed in front of me, I’ve been chased through a strange city by the murderer—who’s still out there on the loose, by the way—I’ve been interviewed by the cops, and now I’m seriously considering contacting the embassy so I can get out of police protection and go home.”

  “Is that what you really want?”

  “Not me,” Luke said. “I’m writing a book.”

  “This isn’t why I came here, Ben. I came for you, because Luke can do something extraordinary with your writing, and I want to know what that means. But all the rest of this, everything else that’s happened…”

  “It sucks, I know. I was there when Eduardo went down, just the same as you.”

  “And yet you can sit there and write like nothing happened.”

  “On the contrary, I’m sitting here and writing because it happened.” He closed his notebook and gave her every soldier of attention he could muster, considering most of them were marching off to war with Tilanna. “You think any of this is coincidence? You think that the fact Luke can read my stuff is just happenstance? This may surprise you, Mira Westbrook, but there are still those of us out here in the post–Aquarius Age who believe that some things happen for a reason, that all of us are connected, and when we start pulling each other’s strings, it brings us all a bit closer, for better or for worse.”

  “Sounds like metaphysics to me.”

  Ben gestured to Luke. “And this isn’t? This … this thing your brother can do is normal?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The hell you don’t. You want to hear what I think?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I think that you’ve spent so long believing in Luke here that you forgot how to believe in yourself.”

  Mira pushed her hair from her face and slid forward in her chair. “I hate to break this to you, Mr. Amateur Psychologist, but before we showed up on your shoddy doorstep, the only thing you believed in was shooting pool. So maybe what you think you see in me is just something you see in yourself. And now all three of us are in the middle of a major mess that isn’t our fault at all, so I think I have a little license to show some concern.”

  Ben almost laughed at her. Not because she was funny. And not because he wasn’t taking her seriously. He wanted to laugh just because, like Ben himself, she didn’t know her own power when it was right in front of her. Ben had written a damn fine novel at one point in his life, its genre belying its themes. And Mira had a strength she didn’t recognize. How else could she so easily do the things she’d done? Since he’d known her, she’d driven a Land Rover at high speed while under fire, broken into a dead man’s house, and discovered clues about his connection to a savage murderer. She had no idea who she was. Goddamn Wonder Woman.

  Ben gave her his most challenging look. “Whose doorstep are you calling shoddy?”

  After an uncertain moment, she parted with a smile. “Sorry about that.”

  And now he did laugh, a chuckle from the depths of himself, rising up like something once lost at sea but shaken loose by the earth tremors happening around him. “You know what your problem is, my lass?”

  “You’re still analyzing my problems?”

  “Your problem is that you insist on believing that the rabbit’s in the hat.”

  “I think you’ve lost me.”

  “It’s like this.” He paused to consider what he was about to say. She would think he was insane. She would think that she’d hitched her brother’s wagon to a mentally unstable star. But there was a thickness in his blood that hadn’t been there in years, and it swelled his veins with the story. “On the day my father was killed and Jonah paralyzed, I was given a special ability.”

  Mira could not have been paying closer attention; she was fixed to him.

  “What is it?” Luke asked. “What’s your ability?”

  Ben never looked away from Mira. Now that he’d started, there was no tugging on the reins. He might as well just say it, as farfetched as it sounded. “When a magician pulls a rabbit from the hat, sometimes you just need faith that there isn’t a secret compartment, that there’s nothing up the sleeve, that the hand isn’t quicker than the eye. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, the magician pulled that rabbit out of nowhere, not with sleight of hand but with real and honest magic. At least as honest as magic can be.”

  “Ben, what’s your ability?”

  Ben wet his lips. “I can’t be harmed by bullets.”

  Just what he expected to happen at this pronouncement, he couldn’t say. He’d never stated it out loud. Maybe the walls should have trembled or a pipe organ should have played a few momentous notes. At the very least, he should’ve gotten goosebumps. And he did.

  Luke scratched his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “After we left ACEF,” Ben continued, “when Jonah was complaining that I was bulletproof, he was speaking both figuratively and literally. He was there when it happened to me, in the summer of 1979, on the way home from the funeral of the noblest man I’ve ever known. One of the cops was talking to me, telling me I’d be all right. He did a magic trick with a bullet from his gun belt. Made it disappear from his hand. Jonah was right there beside me when that officer pushed a bullet into my heart and made me immune.”

  “You mean like Superman?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah.” Ben kept his eyes on Mira. “Just like Krypton’s favorite son.”

  If he’d expected Mira to scoff at him, she proved again to be a woman of surprises. She appeared to be weighing it, or perhaps she was weighing her own faith. God knew that Ben had done the same thing himself.

  “Do you believe that’s true?” she asked after a while.

  “Something’s got to be true.”

  The door swung open, scaring all of them.

  Gabe stood in the doorway. “They found the woman in the wagon, burned to a cinder in that motherfucker’s cave. They can’t identify her through dental records because he pulled out her teeth.”

  Ben closed his eyes.

  “Tomorrow morning I’m going to the prison and talk to Lepin,” Gabe said. “I’m going to make him tell me why all of this is happening, I’m going to find out who the rifleman is, and then I’m going to kill him.”

  He went to the adjoining room and closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  The door creaked open in the night.

  Though Gabe was supposed to be sharing a room with Ben, the writer and his co-conspirator were still out there concocting their plots at two thirty in the morning. They were Rumpelstiltskins spinning straw into literary fool’s gold. Gabe, staring at the ceiling and trying to trick sleep into ambushing him, barely heard their muffled manifesto through the thin wall. They were hip deep in something about terraforming. Apparently their characters were trying to build an atmosphere. Like would-be gods.

  In the dark, Mira said, “Is this seat taken?”

  Gabe heard her move the room’s single chair across the carpet and position it near the bed. He wished he could rewind time and uninvolve her, just get her safely out of this wreck his life had become. He wanted to go home.

  “I’m betting you’re not asleep,” Mira said.

  “Does wishing count?”

  “In this world? It doesn’t seem to.”

  Gabe rolled over. In the dark, her face made more sense, simply because the heavy shadows gave him an excuse for not being able to recognize her. The curtains permitted only a vertical band of light to reach her, drawing a line along her cheek.

  “You don’t have to come tomorrow,” he told her.

  “And you don’t have to try and talk me out of it. By the sound of things, I guess all four of us are going. Strength in numbers, you know.”

  “They won’t let us all in. Prison policy says—”

  “Only on
e visitor per inmate per week. Yeah, I heard what Ben said. But it doesn’t matter. I’d rather be sitting in a prison parking lot than waiting here for him to find us.”

  Gabe didn’t have to ask what him she meant. The rifleman. When talking with the first officers on the scene at the bookstore, Mira had referred to him as the man in the too-big coat. “There are two cops outside. I don’t think he’s getting in here.”

  “Sure. I’ve seen the movies. I know what happens to police officers who get assigned babysitting duty. They end up dead in their cars. I’ll take my chances by staying on the move.”

  Gabe sat up, putting his back against the wall, as the bed had no headboard. “Fontecilla’s been in contact with the embassy in Santiago. They’re sending an attorney in the morning. He also said that he gave an interview to the paper about the fire in the desert, so this is officially getting out of hand.”

  “I think it was probably out of hand the moment you saw Alban Olivares running through the dark.”

  “Good point. You know…” A desire struck him with an abruptness that caused him to lose his train of thought. He suddenly wanted to be sitting across from this woman at dinner. Here he was, caught up in something that was liable to get him killed, when he could have been getting to know this person and, if he was lucky, saying something to make her laugh.

  “I’m still here,” she said.

  A bolder man would’ve told her what he was thinking, but Gabe’s bravery ended with chasing down malevolent murderers. “Maybe we should just get some sleep. Tomorrow could be … stressful. To say the least.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll go disperse the great rainmakers of Mars and impose mandatory shut-eye. I just wanted to … say good night.”

  Gabe almost reached for her hand, thought better of it, then said to hell with that and reached for her anyway. “Thanks. For being here. For putting yourself at risk. For everything.”

  “I haven’t done much but run for my life like a sissy, but you’re welcome.” She squeezed his fingers and left him alone in the dark.

  Gabe lay there, thinking not about the rifleman or the morning’s meeting with Micha Lepin, but instead about the warmth of her hand.