Ring Of Knives

by Daniels, James

  "I took care of him."

  Lancy asks me something else but I don't hear it. There's someone in the Merc. In the passenger seat. I start walking.

  The two suits step in front of me. One's big, one's thin, but with the glare of the headlights behind them, they're featureless. A voice I've never heard before says, "Hold on, Big Guy, the man asked you a question." When the big suit puts a hand on my chest I slap it back where it came from.

  "Frank." Lancy catches up to me as I push past them, his hand on my arm. "I asked you a question, Frank."

  "What?" I turn.

  "Is he dead? Is Cranovicz dead?"

  "I said I took care of him."

  "What's that mean, Frank?"

  "It means I did what I could."

  For a time, we just stand there, facing each other, listening to the engines tick. Then he lets go. "All right boys," he says, sounding tired, "we've got a train to catch tomorrow."

  I don't know what he's talking about, train to catch, and I don't care. I make for the Mercedes. With every step my throat gets tighter. By the time I reach it I can barely breathe.

  Ingrid.

  But is it? My first thought is, it can't be. In the darkness the dashboard throws a green light on the cords of her neck. That can't be her, I think, Ingrid's not old. But then I remember my own age, and all the time that's passed.

  "Ingrid?" I cross to the passenger side window, and crouch to look in. She's still looking straight ahead. The black veil divides her face into diamonds, all but her mouth. When I see her mouth, there's just no question. I lean closer. The window is half-open, and I catch the scent of lilacs.

  "Baby, it's me." I pull on the door handle.

  Clunk. Locked.

  "She doesn't want to talk to you, Frank."

  I turn. Lancy's standing in the headlights, tapping the ash of his Camel. "What are you talking about?" I say. "She came all this way." I turn back to the car. "You came all this way."

  She turns so that her chin is almost pointing at me. Almost. Her hand reaches for the door and for one moment my chest gets tight with hope. Then the window rolls up, cutting me off from the scent of lilacs.

  "Come on, Frank." Lancy puts a hand on my elbow.

  I shake him off.

  "Ingrid." My palms are flat on the glass, but she's turned back, her eyes looking to where the headlights vanish into the fog. Then she begins to vanish too. She lifts a Chesterfield to her mouth with a shaking hand. Her lipstick is black in the green dash-light. She drags, exhales, and the haze in the car deepens.

  "Frank, don't make it any worse than it is. Let's go."

  "Not until she looks at me."

  "Christ, Frank, I can hardly look at you. Have you seen yourself lately?"

  And suddenly I do. Suddenly I'm not looking at Ingrid but at the glass between us, and I see what she sees. It isn't pretty. There are three long furrows in my cheek where the girl clawed me. Half my face is slick with blood. It's dripping off my chin.

  "Mr. Lancy sir, there's lights up on the hill."

  "All right, that does it. Frank, you ride with Morris and Hinks."

  "No." I shove Lancy away. "No." I look around. My chest hurts. I say, "I'm not going anywhere with those two Bible salesmen."

  There's a pause. I hear voices in the fog, far away but getting closer. We all stand there for a minute, listening. "Fine," Lancy says, turning away. "You'll ride with me, but not in the Merc. Morris, we're switching."

  "Fine by me," the big one says, and makes sure he says it in my direction. I watch him walk over to the black car, I see her long white arm stretch to the driver's door and do for him what she wouldn't do for me.

  Clunk.

  And he's in.

  It's too much. I turn away, follow Lancy to the agency car. Ahead of us, there's lights moving through the woods, past the watertower, toward the clearing. Lancy gets in and revs the engine. I slide into shotgun and slam the door shut. Clouds have finally smothered the rain-moon high above us, but before they do I spy the old familiar Ashe Agency logo on the car window, the flame-within-a-flame.

  And beneath it, the words Lux et Calor.

  "Can you try not bleeding on the seat? Thanks." Lancy pulls a rag from somewhere and tosses it my way. He looks over at me but I'm watching the two taillights ahead of us, weaving down the mountain. He clears his throat, spits out the window. Something dead appears in the road. He swerves smoothly around it.

  "You shouldn't give those fellows such a hard time, Frank. Morris came to us after a stint in Sing-Sing, eight years for touch bargained down to three. He's a good man for spotting yeggs and boosters, plus he boxes like a kangaroo. And Hinks may look pennyweight but he's an ace shadow. Same with Morris, for all his size. In fact, Morris reminds me some of you, back in the day. Give them a chance. You three are going to be tight as twins this week. Tomorrow morning you all catch a train for Texas."

  Something else dead in the road. Lancy doesn't bother to swerve this time and there's the double thump as we pass over it. A rank smell fills the car.

  "Christ," Lancy says, rolling up his window. "Skunk." He looks for it in the rear-view. "I said I'm sending you to Texas, Frank. Don't you want to know why?"

  "What I want to know," I say, "is who owns that goddamn Mercury. I want to know if it's who I think it is."

  "Jesus, but I can still smell that thing. Would you please roll up your window, Frank?"

  "We're past it," I say. "What good's it going to do now?" But I roll the window up all the same. "The Merc," I say. "Tell me it isn't Kepler's."

  For a minute there's no sound but the jounce of wheels on the dirt road. Lancy sighs through his nose, a whistling sound. "I don't know why you have to assume."

  "Why? Because she's smoking goddamn Chesterfields is why. Because she's got a rock around her neck as big as my fist."

  He looks away, shrugs. "I'm not a part of this, Frank. Kepler tells me what to do, I tell you. It's been a long time, and we're glad to have you back. The rest, Ingrid and all the rest, well, like you said about the skunk, that's all past. What's the good in going into it now?"

  "That's cute," I say.

  He gives me a look. "Don't play the hard case with me, Frank. I'm not the one who botched this thing. Your first job."

  "My first job is right, and I only agreed to do it because you said she—"

  "Stop yelling, Frank. That wasn't my decision. She said she wanted to talk to you is all. She's the real reason you're all heading down to El Paso."

  "What?"

  "Lionel." He looks at me. "Her son Lionel."

  "I know who Lionel is."

  "Well, he's in El Paso, on Agency business. Or he was. We lost contact with him three weeks ago. That's where you guys come in."

  I'm staring at him. "Lionel?"

  "Lionel."

  "Since when has he had anything to do with the Agency?"

  Lancy keeps two hands on the wheel. His eyes follow the car in front of us. When the Merc's brakelights flash, his cheeks blush a deep red.

  "He's been good to her," Lancy says finally. "After you left, he took care of her. Made sure she was provided for. Her and Lionel."

  "I see." I swallow that. I look at the logo on the window, the flame-within-a-flame. Beneath it, Lux et Calor. Light and Heat. "And how is Mrs. Kepler doing these days?"

  Lancy chews his mustache. "Diane is well."

  "Glad to hear it," I say. "Glad to hear it."

  # # # # # #

  The rest of the drive is silent. Around midnight we pull into Bridgewater, and when the Merc turns off a side street, Lancy doesn't follow. I don't ask why, and I don't have to.

  "We're staying here, at the Lakota," he says.

  We pull into the drive. It's a big place with a copper roof. "Well that sounds fine," I say.

  He looks at me resentfully. "Costs a lot to put us up here," he says. "They thought you'd need a little something after the job."

  "They were right about that."

  An In
dian kid in a top hat and glasses comes out and reaches for the door. Lancy waves him off. "Here," he says, tossing him the keys, "our bags are in the trunk."

  While the kid unloads, Lancy and I go inside. The lobby is gloomy with rugs that look Persian and plants that look dead. Along one wall there's a stone fireplace, and standing next to it, a stuffed bear snarls at nothing in particular. The air is thick with smoke. The place smells like a tannery and Lancy says so.

  "That would be Tommy's fault, I'm afraid."

  Through the haze of woodsmoke I see a man behind the check-in desk. He's a hatchet-faced runt with bifocals and slicked-back hair. "Tommy," he says again. "He's getting your bags now, I believe. Full blooded Mandan, you know. Heard of them? The first settlers in this area thought the Mandans were the lost tribe of Israel, because their skin was lighter than the Lakotas, isn't that something? Only it isn't really lighter, their skin. Nor are they particularly clever. Sloping brows, et cetera. Tommy's no exception. This afternoon I told him to light a fire and so he did, only I neglected to tell him to open the flue, so he didn't. Simple, the lot of them, but brave enough. Tommy's own father shot that grizzly standing by the fireplace, isn't that something? Confidentially, I stuffed him myself."

  "And where'd you put him after you stuffed him?" I ask.

  "The fireplace, where you see him now."

  "I'm talking about Tommy's father."

  The clerk's smile falters. He takes in the oil rag I'm holding to my cheek. "You seem to be bleeding, sir."

  "So I do, isn't that something?"

  Lancy steps in before things can get any happier. He flashes the badge with the All-Seeing Eye, lays down some cash. He gets two keys and a receipt.

  "And some quinine, some bandages for my friend," he says. "And remember, there's two others coming, so keep an eye out for them too."

  "Will they have identification?"

  "You'll know them by their sloping skulls," I say. Then Lancy hustles me over to the stairway.

  "You're going to want to lay off," he says. I don't answer. He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes. "I don't know, Frank," he says. "I just don't know. You realize I'm going to have to make a report out, don't you? What am I supposed to put on it? What am I supposed to say?"

  "Put down that thing about the Mandans being Jewish, Kepler will like that."

  "Listen." Lancy isn't fooling now. He presses two fingers into my chest. "Listen. Do you want this, Frank? Do you want to be back with the Agency?"

  I look at the carpet, but it's the color of old blood. I look at the wallpaper but it's blue fleur-de-lis. I close my eyes.

  "Do you, Frank?"

  "Yes."

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Because it's been a long time. And I know it hasn't been any picnic for you, the war, the in-between years, the sanitarium, all that."

  "It wasn't a – ."

  "Whatever you call it. Call it whatever you call it. You're back now, it doesn't matter. And we're glad to have you on board again. All of us. People still remember you, the new recruits hear stories, they want to be like you. Morris and Hinks, believe it or not. You could do a lot of good. Especially for those who worked like hell to get you this job. Me, for one. I put myself on the line, Frank."

  "I know you did."

  "All right then."

  "I'm sorry about Cranovicz."

  "That's all right."

  "I broke his jaw, is all."

  Lancy nods unhappily. "Well, that'll shut him up for now. He'll catch it one way or the other. Forget about him. Clean up. Rest. It looks like you've got the honeymoon suite."

  He gives me the key. I look at it. One end is shaped like a valentine.

  "Who's idea was this?"

  Lancy shrugs. "Just worked out that way. There's a greenhouse next door, maybe you'll have fresh-cut flowers, a heart-shaped bed." He opens the door to his room. "Least it'll be clean," he says, "it'll make up for El Paso. Good night, Frank." And he shuts the door behind him.

  The honeymoon suite. Someone at the Agency has a sense of humor. I cross slowly down to the end of the hall, and there I stop. The last door has ivy painted around the edges, and says Les Newlyweds in gold lettering. I stand there a while, looking at it, not wanting to enter but having nowhere else to go. My hand drifts up to my ripped cheek, comes away wet.

  All of a sudden a case of the shakes catches me by surprise, and I grab the doorknob for support. I take long, slow gulps of air. Rest, I think, I need rest.

  But when I open the door, it's not rest that comes to me. I've only taken two steps into the darkness when I smell it, a whiff of something dark and cloying and sweet.

  Maybe you'll have fresh cut flowers, Lancy had said. And I do.

  Lilacs.

  I stand there in the darkness, breathing in the scent. Suddenly my gorge rises. I step back, slam the door shut, leaving a red smear below Les Newlyweds.

  Halfway down the stairs I run into Tommy the Mandan. He's got my suitcase in one hand and a stack of bandages in another.

  "Your bags, sir."

  "Set it down."

  "Down?"

  "Down." I pull off his top hat, drop a pocketful of coins into it, hand it back to him. "Tommy, where can a working man find some refreshment on a Friday night, a town like this?"

  "Refreshment?"

  I make a hand gesture.

  "Oh," he says, his glasses flashing. "Refreshment."

  And the hunt is on.

  # # # # # #

  The town's small and the hour's late, but the boy knows his way around. Within the hour I'm walking back up the steps to my room, holding a paper bag filled with two bottles of McCullum's, two Old Crow, and a Booth Ultre. It's good stuff, too, uncut. The steals are still intact. But with every step my mood gets blacker.

  Coming back we stopped at a fountain to clean my face and strap on the bandages. The cuts are deeper than I'd thought, three grooves beginning at my jaw and curving up to my cheekbone. Removing the oil rag sets them bleeding afresh, and now I can feel the bandages stiffening with blood and quinine.

  The scent of quinine takes me back. Back to the old days, after I had graduated from beer to wine and wine to whiskey, and could no longer afford any of them. The war had only made my habit worse, and after I came home it really took off. I lost my job at the Agency, lost Ingrid, lost the memory of what my own face looked like. The last step on the rung, I got a job mopping the floors at a morgue in St. Louis. It paid five dollars a week, and I only took it because no one kept track of the formaldehyde. By then, that was the only thing that worked. I'd bring in jugs of cantaloupe-water from Little Mexico to cut it with, and drink all night. One night I didn't even have that, so I sat there, cotton up my nose, swallowing the stuff straight until I bled from the eyes like a horny-toad.

  That was a year ago, a year that I spent mostly at the Osterhausen Sanitarium in Reno, Nevada. It's free of charge to Mormons, so I converted on the spot. I went to service every day, along with my treatments, for an entire year.

  You'd think that memories of this kind would make me toss this paper bag in the trash. I would think so, too. But it's not the case. Climbing up these creeking steps in Bridgewater, Idaho, I can't really remember the tears, the vomit, the hours of work I put in to get this far. The past and the future disappear in a blur of Chesterfield smoke. And the present smells only of lilacs.

  By the time I get to my room, my whole body is shaking like a tuning fork. When I open the door to Les Newlyweds, I catch a whiff of that dark taint of lilac, ripe to the point of rot. I thought I was ready for it. I'm not. But I press on anyway, into the room. A lamp has been left on, and by its light I see that there are no cut flowers, no heart-shaped bed. Only a standard queen with a red coverlet.

  And on it, Ingrid.

  I stop short. She's sitting there, her hands on her hat, her hat in her lap. I see that her hair has been bobbed, but the bangs are tousled to one side. The lamplight makes one side of her face glow, and le
aves the rest to the shadows.

  I stare at her and she stares back, crumpling her cloche hat. I open my mouth but all that comes out is, "You."

  She nods. Her mouth is tight, her eyes shadowed. "I'm sorry," she says.

  I'd forgotten her voice. Low, like torn felt. It works on me. The floor tilts and I brace myself. The bottles clink in the bag.

  She hears the noise, looks at what I'm holding. Her upper lip gets the better of her lower. "What's in the bag?"

  "Dishware. Why?"

  She draws a shaky breath, says, "I didn't come here to fight."

  "Why did you come?"

  "Because it wasn't fair, what happened. I didn't mean to leave. That is, I meant to leave, but not without talking to you. That's why I went in the first place. To talk."

  "About what?"

  Her brow crinkles in that way it does. "Oh Frank," she says.

  "Don't."

  She looks away for a minute, and the lamplight loses everything but her ear, which is small and pointed. She looks at the far wall, but there is nothing to see there but a bureau and a straw cornucopia filled with red-foil chocolate hearts. An old print hangs above it, showing a pack of beagles cornering a fox.

  Her shoulders rise with a slow breath, and when she looks back her eyes are steady and her brow is smooth.

  "Lionel. I want to talk about Lionel."

  "So talk about him." I take the bag over to the corner desk and set it down. Clink, clink. "How's he doing?"

  "Not well. I haven't heard from him in three weeks."

  "That long?"

  "Frank." Her voice stops me halfway to the window. The old stuff, she hasn't lost it. "I said I didn't come here to fight."

  "Who's fighting?" I pull open the drapes. The town is asleep, and clouds blot out the moon. "So tell me, I say. "Tell me about Lionel."

  "He had a hard year." Looking down, she smoothes her skirt. "You know he never approved of my…" biting her lip, "…friendship with Jake Kepler. Well, it was worse than ever this year. At each other's throats constantly. So bad, in fact, that I nearly left town. But when Jake heard that I was considering leaving Chicago, he came up with a plan. He said Lionel just needed life experience. So he gave him a job with the Agency – and oh Frank, it made all the difference in the world." Looks up, her eyes shining.