Nameless Night

by G. M. Ford

  “Let’s get out of here,” Randy said.

  Acey reached up and took his hand. Together, they kicked their way through the debris covering the floor, out through the flooded kitchen to what remained of the back porch, where the roof had partially collapsed, forcing them to veer left toward the tracks or walk into a faceful of nails.

  The cool morning air washed over Randy like a wave. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came away with a wristful of sludge. The sight of Acey nearly caused him to laugh. The kid’s head was covered with bits of insulation and Sheetrock. He tousled the boy’s hair but not much of the stuff came out. A train whistle sounded again, much closer this time. Two different car alarms were going off, and in the distance, the whoop whoop of a siren seemed to be moving closer. Randy looked up.

  The car and the train were moving in opposite directions. Acey and Randy stood stupefied as the train came roaring toward them, its great single light sweeping the track in front of the engine. The red brake lights of the car flickered and then showed themselves for real. The car stopped.

  “We gotta get the fuck outta here,” Acey said. He pointed after the car. “Ain’t no way out down there. They gonna have to come back.”

  He was right. The car containing the gunmen had come to a stop and was in the process of turning around. The train came chugging past the headlights when the car was partially through the U-turn. A shout from the car floated their way. They’d been spotted. Randy grabbed the kid’s arm. “Let’s go,” he yelled above the deep throbbing of the engine. They took off together, running hard toward the tracks.

  Instinctively Randy turned his head toward the lights. The train was gathering speed. The car was bouncing at them with somebody hanging out the window. Wasn’t until he saw the yellow flame of the muzzle flash that Randy realized somebody in the car was shooting at them. A slug buzzed by so close, he checked himself for blood.

  Randy turned and scooped the boy into his arms, then turned again and ran for the tracks, ran for the patch of white light moving along in front of the engine. The engineer must have seen them coming. He tooted his horn twice and then repeated the warning as Randy approached the tracks, his legs burning from the strain of the boy’s weight, his ankles threatening to roll over as his boots met the two-inch gravel and then one final lunge, stepping over the nearest track, so close to the front of the engine he could smell the grease, then getting a foot down between rails, before catching his heel on the far track, sending the two of them rolling head over heels down the far side of the grade. Randy groaned at impact and rolled over onto his back.

  Acey got himself together first. He had Randy by the elbow, pulling him to his feet, “Come on, dog. Come on,” he was panting.

  Randy followed the boy’s prompting and struggled to his feet. His head throbbed so hard he could barely see. His left arm, where he’d landed on the rough gravel, hung nearly useless at his side. The Mercedes was fifty yards away. They shuffled that way together.

  As they approached the car, Randy shot a glance back over his shoulder. Acey had been right. The train went on forever. He threw himself into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “Go, dog, go,” Acey chanted.

  30

  The Four Seasons Hotel offers two seating choices for lunch. For those of a romantic nature, the Pool Room offers a gurgling marble pool surrounded by a veritable forest of lighted trees, a nearly perfect setting for amour, improved only by the impeccable yet unobtrusive service. For those engaged in those more practical and power-oriented pursuits for which the hotel has become so justly famous, the Grill Room’s legendary rosewood walls and soaring ceilings have beckoned moguls and machers for nearly a half century. More than sirloins had been devoured within its hallowed confines.

  Every afternoon, the restaurant’s gleaming brass door on East Fifty-second Street develops what owner Armond Arabelles likes to call “a little limousine problem” as CEOs, managing partners, and all manner of political movers and shakers sit quietly and look out the windows as their drivers jockey through two blocks of “limo lock.” Walk-ins are politely sent on their way. Regulars have their bills sent to the office.

  “I’m going to list this lunch prominently in my expense column,” Jacobson said.

  “Old friends catching up.”

  “Why not? I don’t get to New York very often these days.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said.

  Jacobson ordered the civet-of-wild-boar appetizer. Pomegranate sauce on the side. Bob opted for the lentil-and-sausage soup. Entrées were bipartisan. They both ordered the roast turbot with root vegetables.

  Bob took a sip from his glass of Talisker on the rocks. He’d been a single-malt aficionado since grad school days at Yale. Somewhere in the past he’d settled on Dalwhinnie as his Scotch of choice. That preference went unchallenged for nearly thirty years, until, two years ago when his wife, Christine, learned she had relatives living on the Isle of Skye, a discovery which of course prompted a visit to the venerable town of Carbost, a rust-tinged hamlet nestled among the rough slopes of the Cuillin Mountains and boasting itself as the sole distiller of Scotch on the isle. They’d hiked the broken ground, met the relatives, toured the Talisker distillery, and pretended to enjoy some of the most execrable food on the planet.

  When they got back home, Bob suddenly found his preference in Scotch under fire. About the third time Christine demanded an explanation as to precisely why he preferred Dalwhinnie to her suddenly beloved Talisker, Bob had followed the party line of least resistance and switched his allegiance, exhibiting a chameleon-like ability to blend into the leaves, a long-nurtured talent which had served him so abundantly in the arena of politics.

  “Didn’t I just see you?” he asked Ron Jacobson.

  Jacobson leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Unfortunately so.”

  “What’s up?”

  “The matter is rapidly coming to a head.”

  “Really?”

  “We always knew it was flammable.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I wanted to discuss with you…” He allowed the rest of the sentence to taper off as the waiter returned with the appetizers. He thanked the waiter and called him by name: Gino. He looked up from his food and commented on the quality of his appetizer; Bob reciprocated to the effect that his soup was likewise marvelous.

  They ground away at the small talk until the four men in the next banquette said their good-byes and shuffled out. He checked the area. Satisfied no one was within earshot, Jacobson said, “It may be time to implement our backup scenario.”

  “Tell me.”

  So he did. Starting with how they now believed Paul Hardy had managed to hitch a ride with a young woman named Alma Anne Harris, who at that time was in the process of quitting her job as a hairstylist and vacating her apartment for the purpose of moving back to her native Alabama.

  Somewhere along the way, Paul Hardy had become Randall James.

  “So?”

  “So, it turns out the real Randall James is another of the residents at the group home where Mr. Hardy once lived and they checked and found the real Randall watching the Ultimate Fighting Challenge in the home’s TV room. Agents felt certain that Paul Hardy was using Randall James’s identity.”

  “Not much gets by these guys, does it?”

  “Barney Fife could have figured it out.”

  Jacobson went on about the wi-fi query from Alabama, the transfer of title on the car, and the assurance that no one on the Alabama end was otherwise involved.

  “What else?”

  “The Florida State Patrol…” he began.

  “Florida.” Bob gargled a mouthful of soup. He dropped the spoon into the bowl and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Did you say Florida?”

  Gino arrived with a gleaming silver tray. They smiled and nodded and thanked him for the service. When he was gone, they ate in silence.

  “What
now?” Bob asked.

  “We hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the worst.”

  Bob nodded his agreement. “The turbot’s excellent today,” he commented.

  THE LETTUCE WAS brown around the edges. Kirsten set the plastic container back on the counter and selected another salad from the array…and then another and a third and a fourth. They were all the same way. She could tell the guy behind her in line was losing his patience but was too polite to ask her to hurry the hell up. She grabbed two containers of yogurt and a white plastic spoon. Five sixty-five including tax.

  The courthouse commissary was a weird place. Everybody treated it like it was a library and they weren’t supposed to make any noise. The combined effect of the forty or so whispered conversations was akin to the prolonged hiss of a leaking tire, and so it caught Kirsten’s notice when suddenly the hissing stopped altogether and the room fell strangely silent. She wiped her mouth with a stiff paper napkin and looked up.

  Bruce Gill was smiling his political smile as he made his way toward Kirsten through the maze of tables, favoring those he recognized with a nod or a wink, stopping here and there to schmooze with several of the more noteworthy diners. Took him a full five minutes to cross the room.

  “Slumming?” Kirsten asked.

  “I like to think of it as keeping in touch with the electorate.”

  He sat down in the chair opposite Kirsten. The whispered conversations rose back to their normal level. All eyes were slanted in their direction.

  “You ever been in here before?” she asked.

  “Are you suggesting…”

  “Have you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “So?”

  “Margie said you were down here.”

  “I’ll have the brief for the ethics committee ready by tomorrow afternoon, say fourish,” she said as she peeled the foil seal from the second yogurt container.

  “Take a look at this.” He slid an FBI document across the table at her.

  “What this?” she asked around a mouthful.

  “It’s the IAFIS report on that water glass you gave me.”

  “We got a hit?”

  He checked the room and then bobbed his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. “Did we ever.”

  It was obvious. He was going to make her read it on her own. He liked to do things like that. She put down her spoon, wiped her hands and mouth again, and picked up the report. She read it slowly, being careful not to miss anything.

  “No shit,” she said when she finished.

  “No shit,” he echoed. “Can I quote you on that, Ms. Kane?”

  “The one who disappeared…right before the…”

  “That’s the one.”

  “After all these years?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is a prank.”

  “That’s what I thought, so I ran them through again. They say the prints are no more than three months old.”

  She checked his expression for irony and found none.

  “I mean…where’s he been all this…”

  “On Unsolved Mysteries.”

  She chuckled. “I’ve seen it half a dozen times.”

  “It’s become folklore.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, D. B. Cooper, and our boy here. ‘Unexplained Disappearances.’”

  She thought it over. “We get this wrong…” she began.

  “We look like a pair of yodels.”

  “We become folklore.”

  “Think Geraldo Rivera.”

  The thought caused her to shiver.

  He interrupted her thoughts.

  “I got us a continuance on the ethics hearing.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs in Tibet?”

  He tapped his nose with his forefinger. “I smell something here,” he said. “There’s a lotta juice being floated around. And it’s all connected.”

  “What makes you think that?” she asked between bites.

  “’Cause I had to pull out all the stops to get some bullshit ethics hearing postponed.” He had her attention now. His voice began to rise. Heads were turning their way. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I went to Billy, just like I always do.” Billy was the Honorable Speaker of the State House of Representatives William F. Crowley III, with whom Bruce Gill had been conducting mutually profitable business for the better part of twenty years.

  “And he turned you down?”

  “Flat. Just about told me to kiss his ass,” the D.A. whispered.

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means he’s found himself a bigger, hairier ass to kiss.”

  She finished her yogurt and dropped the spoon in the container. “Round theses parts, Chief, there ain’t no bigger, hairier ass than yours.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  And then she got it. Somewhere in D.C. somebody was exerting a lot of pressure. Pressure whose upside promise was sufficient to make Crowley risk his long-standing relationship with Gill. Whatever it was…it was heavy. Crowley was no fool. If he was changing partners, the dance was a doozy.

  “And you thought, what?…This…”—she gestured toward the fingerprint report on the table—“you think this is all connected somehow?”

  “How could it not be?” he asked.

  Much as she disliked the idea, he had a point. Either they were looking at some serious statistical unlikelihood, or the recent string of events was all, in some manner or another, connected.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Make some calls, find out what in hell is going on here. Make damn sure we’re not being duped. How come some dude who’s been missing for years winds up in a home for the disadvantaged. How this guy mentions the name Wesley Howard and feds come raining all over our asses.” He shook his perfectly sculpted head. “This is big-time shit here.”

  What he meant was that this was big-time TV exposure—60 Minutes, Evening Magazine kind of stuff.

  “Big-time shit,” he said again.

  She stood up. He followed suit. “Maybe not the best dining conversation I’ve ever heard,” she said.

  31

  Sit still,” Acey said. “Ain’t never gonna get this done you keep actin’ like a bitch.” He dabbed antiseptic onto the topmost of Randy’s wounds.

  “Not a nice word,” Randy said.

  “What’s wid you and words? They just words, dog.”

  “It matters.”

  He daubed the wound quite a bit harder than necessary. “Ain’t nothin’ but words.”

  “I got an idea,” Randy said.

  “Yeah…whassat?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t refer to women as anything you wouldn’t want somebody to call your mom.”

  Acey stared a hole in the side of Randy’s head, dropped the gauze on the bed, and walked over by the window, where he stood looking out at the bricks of the building next door. “I got me an idea, too,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe you oughta go fuck yourself.”

  After a stop at an all-night drugstore for bandaging supplies, they were holed up in the Whispering Palms Motel about fifty miles south of the Grove. One look at Randy and the desk clerk had demanded a hundred-dollar deposit on the room. Between the two of them, they ran the hot water out three times before they managed to wash all the debris from themselves.

  “I was just trying to make a point,” Randy said. “Sorry.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Randy went to work on his own shoulder, placing a sterile pad over the wound and then winding gauze over it to keep it in place until finally covering the whole thing with white surgical tape. He ripped the tape with his teeth and smoothed the end down.

  “You seen her, huh?” Acey said out of the blue.

  “Yeah,” Randy said. “I saw her.”

  “She…I mean…did they…”

  “She never knew what hit her.”

  Acey turned his way, trying
to read his face. Randy hid behind a grimace as he shouldered himself into his last clean shirt.

  “She always say that how she wanted to go.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You know. Quick like. One minute you here. One minute you gone.”

  “She got her wish.”

  Acey sniffled and then wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What she say? Live fast. Die young. Leave a great-lookin’ corpse.”

  “Fonzie.”

  “Who?”

  “Guy on TV used to say that.”

  “Guy wid the motorcycle.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “We used to watch that on the TV when I was little.”

  “You’re still little.”

  Acey wiped his nose again. “You remember when you was little.”

  “No.”

  “How far back you remember?”

  “My memory’s not like that,” Randy said. He could see Acey didn’t understand, so he kept talking. “There’s no before and after in my memory. It’s like everything happened at once. I have all these individual memories floating around in my head, none of which is attached to any of the others. I lack context.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Context is who you are. It’s the thing you filter everything else through.”

  “But you doan know who you are.”

  “Nope.”

  “So you got no filter.”

  “You got it.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “One what?”

  “One of them things you got floatin’ around inside yo’ head.”

  Randy thought it over. “I’m good at math,” he said finally.

  “How you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “How you get good at math?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I suck at math,” Acey said.

  “How do you know?”

  Acey made his “damn you’re dumb” face. “School.”

  “Probably the same way I got good at it.”

  “But you doan remember school?”