Asterisk

by Campbell Armstrong

  “It’s no joke, John,” she said. “I’m leaving you.”

  She got up from the table.

  “There’s a cab coming in a minute or two.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “Please, John, don’t make it difficult for me—”

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Please,” she said. She dragged one of the cases out of the kitchen. He followed her.

  “Marcia, listen—”

  She would not look at him. The perfect stranger.

  “Marcia, listen—”

  “Look,” she said. “Don’t say any more, okay? It’s finished. I wanted to be gone from here before you got back, I didn’t want to see you again. You follow me?”

  “Marcia—”

  “It’s changed, John. It’s not the way it was before you got into this stupid business with your major general, your missile sites. I mean, you’re not a working journalist any more running down some hot story, are you? It’s just changed so much—”

  He held her by the arms and forced her to face him. He saw it now. “Who was here? Tell me! Tell me who came here!”

  “Nobody came here, John. Nobody. I can make up my own mind, okay? This isn’t working out. That’s all.”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me—”

  “I’m not lying—”

  “Marcia, somebody came here, somebody must have threatened you somehow—”

  He suddenly realized he wanted to hit her, he wanted to strike her out of this state of mind, he wanted the truth. She pulled away from him, stepped back, brushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes.

  “I must get my other case,” she said.

  She went into the kitchen. He followed after her, trying to keep her from moving.

  “Somebody threatened you, didn’t they? How? Tell me how. God damn it, tell me!”

  “Please, John.” She hauled the other case out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  “You can’t speak, right? Is that it? They’ve bugged this place, right? They planted their shit here—”

  She looked at him in a rather sad manner. “It’s been fun, John. It’s been nice. I’m sorry it hasn’t worked. Okay? Can you let that sink in? It’s finished.”

  “I can’t let this happen,” he said.

  “You can’t stop it, John. It’s too late.”

  “Marcia, just tell me, okay? Just tell me.”

  She looked down at the rug. “The only thing we’ve got to talk about now is what happens to our stuff. That’s all.”

  “Our stuff? What the hell does that matter?”

  “Some of it’s yours, some of it’s mine, and I guess some of it’s jointly owned.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Thorne said.

  She went on, her voice a monotone he had never heard before. “The prints are mine. The furniture is mostly yours. What I can’t remember is who owns the refrigerator. Can you? Did you buy it? Did I buy it? I can’t remember.”

  Thorne sat down on the sofa. He felt weak, enfeebled, as if he had been traveling a long time on a craft that had not been created for rough oceans. He looked at her and thought: There isn’t a thing they can’t do. There isn’t a single thing. With a signature on a piece of paper, with a furtive telephone call, with an act of surveillance—it didn’t matter, they could do anything they liked. It didn’t resemble anything he remembered from his father’s fervent lectures on the brilliant nature of American life and values: this was something else, a place on the dark side of the moon, perhaps a place his father had never suspected, almost as if the words of the constitutional document he had held so precious threw perverse shadows of themselves, produced counterfeits, opposites, so that for every truth there was a concomitant lie.

  He clenched his fists in frustration. At least it hadn’t been Anna Burckhardt’s fate. At least there was that.

  “I guess we can work out who owns what,” she said. “Especially with the refrigerator.”

  The refrigerator? he thought. It wasn’t the time to be babbling.

  From outside there was the sound of a car horn.

  “I guess that’s my taxi,” she said. She looked at him and there was a very faint smile on her lips. “Goodbye, John. I’m really sorry. Really.”

  4

  He had Brinkerhoff driving in circles, but the tan Chevrolet remained behind, unshakable, dogged. You could say that of Brandt, Hollander thought: he had no intellect and little intelligence, but when you told him to do a thing he would do it, no questions asked. He would have a Colt .45 converted in the shoulder holster; he would have radio contact with whoever was running him. Sharpe, somebody else, the question did not matter now.

  Beyond Rockville, Brinkerhoff asked, “Who is he? Someone you are acquainted with?”

  “More than acquainted,” Hollander said. When something looked like breaking with Asterisk, who else had he turned to but Brandt? He could see the bland, rather innocent face; passing it on the street one might have thought of smalltown football games, a hero of the rah-rah-rah girls, a touchdown that saved the trophy in the final minute. One might have thought of the college hero, Big Man on Campus. But the facade was nothing. Inside, Brandt had the heart of an ice cube. Leave it with me, Ted. Don’t worry about a thing.

  “Are you armed?” Hollander asked.

  Brinkerhoff nodded. “One hears so much about the possibility of being mugged in American cities—”

  “This isn’t your average mugger,” Hollander said.

  The highway was choked with the traffic of a late sunlit afternoon. Commuters getting out of D.C. as early as they could and hurrying home to red-brick houses, wives, perhaps the obligatory martini in a chilled glass, stories of what Johnny had done in school and how much coffee prices had gone up and whether there might be a vacation this year. It was as if these were pictures he perceived on a receding tide, reflections on wave crests, mere illusions.

  He twisted round in his seat.

  The Chevrolet was tucked in behind.

  Brinkerhoff was looking for an opening in the fast lane. There was a Mayflower truck, followed by a refrigerator monstrosity that blew black smoke and had upon its side panel the motto BIRDS EYE. As far back as Hollander could see both lanes were tightly sealed.

  “Give me your gun,” Hollander said.

  Brinkerhoff glanced at him doubtfully.

  “This isn’t the time for any of that,” Hollander said. “Give me the gun.”

  “The glove compartment,” Brinkerhoff said.

  Hollander took out a Colt, a Police Positive. It surprised him somewhat; he had expected a Czech or a Soviet handgun, if anything.

  He checked the weapon. Brandt wasn’t like the Greek; he wasn’t slow-moving, he wasn’t uninventive, and he had more native cunning than the late Lykiard. He looked at Brinkerhoff. He was calm, he had himself together; it was as if there were no possibility of danger. He might have been one of the commuters pondering his hard day at the office, wondering about this account or that one, planning how he could get ahead in the ratrace.

  Once more Hollander looked back.

  The tan Chevrolet was there. Steady. Brandt never lost that quality known as cool, because he had none to lose. He ran like perfect clockwork once you had set him in motion. I’m going to have to kill again, Hollander thought. Or be killed.

  Was anything ever worth that?

  They passed the exit ramp for Germantown. Brinkerhoff appeared to know where he was going now that the maze of Washington was left behind them.

  “Pull over,” Hollander said.

  “What?”

  “Quickly now. Don’t signal.”

  Brinkerhoff drove the Fiat onto the shoulder.

  The Chevrolet went past.

  He saw Brandt’s face, the look of astonishment as the tan car continued in the inside lane.

  “Now get back into the traffic,” Hollander said.

  Brinkerhoff found an opening between a truck and an ice-crea
m van. A temporary maneuver, Hollander thought. For the time being.

  “It’s better to be behind than in front,” he said.

  But Brandt would simply fall back, allow himself to be overtaken; then they would play the slow game with one another until Brandt had got the Chevrolet in back once again. It was breathing space, nothing more.

  Hollander watched the passing landscape a moment. There were billboards looming up, monolithic slabs of advertising detritus: Quaker State Oil, When in Hagerstown stay at the Holiday Inn. It was strange to him, alien; as if for the first time he had come to feel that he was a foreigner in his own country.

  Between gaps in the traffic up ahead, he could see Brandt’s car. He thought: I’ve got to get out of this place, I don’t belong here anymore.

  Thorne found the note pinned inside the refrigerator, which explained why it had seemed she was babbling inconsequentially; she had been trying to tell him. She had thumbtacked it to an egg carton and it was folded over in such a way that at a casual glance one would have overlooked it. He opened it and read:

  They said they’d kill you if I didn’t leave. I love you. Gone to Mothers.

  He ripped the paper up and took it into the bathroom and flushed it away. What had begun in anger had turned to something else: a dumb, unfeeling sensation, a cold realization that they could fuck with your life any way they liked. They could create chaos and destruction, kill as they pleased, frighten as they liked—and all because of what? Because of what? Darkness and denial, cajolement and menace, surveillance and threat: and what appalled him now was his suspicion that you could never quite penetrate the heart of it. It was the core of an impossible onion. The arrogance implicit in it all was stunning; it transported you beyond what was right and wrong, what was moral and what wasn’t. It took you into a nebulous region where any kind of act, so long as it had the sanction of the powers that ran the game, was in itself correct.

  Dear Christ, he thought. They had come here to frighten Marcia, because they wanted to show a little more of their muscle—if any further demonstration was necessary. They had come here to scare her because they wanted to isolate him, they wanted to set him apart, they wanted him to see how simple it was for them to disturb and unravel the fabric of his life. They could take away his job, scare his girl, do whatever they deemed necessary.

  Outside it was practically dark. The sun had almost gone; a few reddish traces in the sky, that was all, like colors spilled carelessly from a palette. He stood on the edge of the parking lot and looked across the neat rows of parked cars. He had the feeling of needing to do something: he was angry again. He felt it as one might feel a palpitation in a nerve, a tic or pulse beneath the skin that would not stop bleating no matter how hard you rubbed.

  At the far end of the parking lot he saw the green Catalina. Jesus, he thought. They don’t know when to draw the line, when to stop and say they had done quite enough, put an end to wholesale damage. He walked to his VW, hesitated, stuck the key back into his pocket, and looked in the direction of the Catalina. He saw the face of the fat man behind glass. He was filled all at once with a sense of violence, of vengeance, of getting even for how Marcia had been treated. Why not? Why not? He owed himself something, after all. He hesitated, then walked to the green car.

  The fat man looked at him oddly, as if this confrontation were the most unlikely thing in the world. Slowly, watching Thorne, he unrolled his window.

  “What’s up, buddy?” he asked.

  Calm, Thorne thought. Keep cool, be patient. What good is anger?

  “Get off my ass,” Thorne said.

  “I don’t think I follow you,” the fat man said.

  “Get off my case, okay?”

  “Listen, buddy, I’m waiting here for somebody—”

  “Like you waited in the library, like you waited in Fredericksburg—just get off my ass.”

  The fat man leaned down to roll his window up, doing the offended citizen bit. Thorne thrust his hand through the space, pulling the man forward by the lapel of his jacket, pressing his face against the edge of the glass. He was strong, he wrenched himself away, he looked like somebody suppressing an urge to violence.

  “Listen,” he said.

  “I don’t need to listen,” Thorne said. He opened the door of the car and the fat man slid away across the bench seat.

  “I’ll call the cops,” the guy said.

  “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to listen,” Thorne said. He was aware of his own rapid heartbeat, the pulse in his wrist: it was the kind of fear you could not draw a circle around and push aside. He was afraid of himself all at once and of what he might do; it was like stumbling across some dark capacity you never knew you possessed, a capability of killing.

  His own voice sounded oddly thick to him: “I’m going to get inside my car, okay. I’m going to drive out of here. If I see you behind me, I’m going to kill you.”

  He wondered how it sounded to the other man, if it carried any weight. The fat man started to laugh.

  “You’re going to kill me?” he said.

  “You got the message,” Thorne said. “You’re quick.”

  The fat man covered his mouth with his hand, trying to contain his laughter. Thorne couldn’t tell; was the laughter one of fear, of ridicule? He didn’t know.

  He slammed the door of the Catalina shut.

  He walked to his VW and got inside and drove out of the parking lot.

  Tarkington took out his gun and held it flat in the palm of his hand. The fucker, he thought. Who does the fucking joker think he’s kidding? He would have killed him there and then. He would have blown him quite away. But Sharpe, goddamn Sharpe, hadn’t given him the green light for an act like that. So you have to sit and be humiliated and look like you’re scared and pretend. It was downright embarrassing. It was a pain in the ass.

  He drove out onto the street. Now what? Did he go back to Sharpe and say his cover had been blown? Or did he keep on the tail of this young clown? An order is an order.

  Vigilance at all times.

  An order. The kid-glove crap.

  What was so important about this joker anyhow that he couldn’t be blown away like anybody else? Tarkington ran into the same old wall of puzzlement. It was like trying to understand the circuitry of a pinball machine. You were in a maze of circuits and colored wires. When the lights flashed, they flashed. When they didn’t, they didn’t. The random transistor. Vigilance. There was a high place where everything originated, an Olympus; only you were on the foot of the slope and trying to look up and there were clouds, great mothers of clouds, everywhere.

  I’m a sap, he thought. But I don’t like being threatened. And I just don’t take easy to humiliation.

  He was sweating.

  He followed the red VW to the end of the street, shrugged his shoulders, and continued after it when it took a right turn.

  Thorne parked outside a Safeways market and went to a telephone. It hadn’t worked; he had known it wouldn’t work but he had done it more for his own sake than to get the fat man off his track. He felt pretty good about it. Even as he saw the green car cruise across the parking lot, he felt good.

  He closed the door of the booth, dialed Marcia’s home. Her mother answered. She had one of those clipped New England voices that sound as if they are coming from permafrost. She had never approved of her daughter’s cohabitation with Thorne. He heard the receiver being clunked down on the table, the distant sound of a TV droning. He looked through the dirty glass window of the booth. The supermarket had a special on Mineola oranges and another on pork ribs. He tapped his fingers, stared in the direction of the green car. Its headlights were dimmed.

  “John?”

  “That was quite an act you put on,” he said. “Just for a moment, you had me almost convinced.”

  “It was terrible,” she said. “He was an old guy, very pleasant, oldie-worldie charm, but you could smell something nasty—”

  “Did he have a name
?”

  “Count Dracula, I guess.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He hummed and hawed a bit but what it boiled down to was that if I didn’t get my ass out of there you were a dead duck.”

  Isolation, Thorne thought. He might have been carrying around some deadly germ, a new strain of Mycobacterium leprae.

  “He had this young guy with him, who was very creepy. He spent his time wandering around touching things. He did something to the telephone—”

  “Yeah,” Thorne said. “It figures.”

  He was silent for a time. He watched a family get out of a station wagon and walk toward the supermarket. Mom and Dad and the whole tribe. The ordinariness of it depressed him somewhat. He imagined them sifting through the vegetable racks, feeling tomatoes for firmness, scrutinizing squashes, examining eggplants. Doing plain straightforward things.

  “Look,” he said. “Stay at your mother’s place—”

  “Is that going to keep you alive?”

  “It just might,” he said.

  She paused, then said: “A few days ago wasn’t everything kinda normal? Refresh my memory—”

  “It was normal,” he said.

  She paused again. “This thing you’re into … is it worth any of this?”

  “I never asked you if Coleridge was worth all the trouble, did I?”

  “Oh, screw Coleridge. I don’t like going to the funerals of loved ones, you understand? I get quite weepy and out of control.”

  He said, “It isn’t going to come to that—”

  “John. Why am I a little bit scared?”

  “You don’t need to be—”

  “Hah! Someone just steps in and says, Hey, the man you love is going to be offed and you tell me not to be scared like it’s something that happens every goddamn day of the week?”

  He stared at the green car. “Take it easy—”

  “I don’t like playing traditional waiting roles, John. It just isn’t my scene. I could never have been in love with a sailor or somebody like that, you know, hanging out waiting for his return—”