Callisto

by Torsten Krol

  “Uhuh, yesterday.”

  The agents exchanged a look, then Deedle says, “You mean the day before yesterday, I think. This is Wednesday now.”

  “Wednesday...”

  “You had a blow to the head, Odell. Can we call you Odell?”

  “Uhuh.”

  “And it was returned to you late Monday night?”

  “They left it in the driveway.”

  “They. Do you know who?”

  “Chief Webb, I think, but he was only fooling around. He brung it back. Was it the propane tank exploded?”

  “No, it was the truck. We found one of the doors a half-mile away with Dean Lowry Lawnmowing on it. It was a truck bomb, Odell.”

  “Truck bomb . . .”

  “What time did they bring it back?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” I didn’t want to tell them about being out with Donnie and Lorraine collecting cash for her drug package. “I found it in the driveway ... it was after ten o’ clock.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “I ...went back inside to get the keys and drive it up to the house.”

  “And did you do that?”

  “No, I...I lost my cell phone inside the truck and I rung the number from the house to make it ring so I can find it . . .”

  Kraus nodded like this is something he can use. “Was the phone in the truck when it was stolen, Odell?”

  “Uhuh. I thought maybe it’s still in there, the floor’s kind of messy.”

  “So you called your own cell and the truck exploded. That’s how it’s done nowadays, using a phone call to activate the detonator. What happened then?”

  “I don’t know. I saw the fridge and the rocker sailing past me like it’s a dream . . .”

  “Now, think hard, Odell. Could this be the work of Dean Lowry?”

  “Dean? No, he’s ... he wouldn’t blow up his own truck.”

  “It isn’t about the truck, it’s about what was done to the truck. They must have crammed every body panel in the vehicle with high explosive. That was one hell of a bang out there, Odell. You can’t remember that part?”

  “No, it was real quiet, so I thought I’m dreaming. Is the house wrecked?”

  “Completely demolished. It’s a miracle you’re still alive and with so few injuries. The emergency team found you way over in back of the house near some cottonwoods. Those trees had every leaf stripped off them, and they had the house in between the bomb and them, so that gives you some indication of how powerful this blast was. We’re still doing the analysis but it looks like this was intended to take out a city block, more or less.”

  Deedle says, “Why do you think it was Chief Webb?”

  “Oh ... he just doesn’t like me, I guess.”

  “That’s an extreme reaction to not liking someone, turning their truck into a bomb. Why doesn’t he like you?”

  “He...I made a mistake about Saturday and Sunday, if I met Dean this day or that day, and it’s like he thinks I’m lying. I told him later I got drunk with Dean so I got that part wrong.”

  “We remember you telling us about that, Odell. It still seems a bit of a stretch to think the Chief of Police would steal someone’s truck and jam it full of explosives just because of something like you described, don’t you think? There’d have to be a better reason that that.”

  “Maybe . . .” was all I could say. To myself I’m thinking it most likely wasn’t Andy Webb after all, only who was it? Who could hate my guts so much they wanted to blow me into a million pieces? This was not making any kind of sense. And I bet Lorraine was mad as hell about the house that she was just about to inherit, but most likely Aunt Bree kept up those insurance payments. But would the policy include terrorist bomb destruction? There are some policies that don’t include flood damage and unless you ask special for it you don’t get it, and if you get flooded out, tough tit, you weren’t covered for that, so was Bree covered for bomb destruction? I would need to ask Lorraine about this.

  “Has she been in to see me?”

  “Who’s that, Odell?”

  “Lorraine.”

  “No,” says Deedle. “You’re restricted.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nobody gets to see you except us. She’s been told you’re okay.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Odell,” says Kraus. “The important thing is to figure out who took the truck and converted it into a bomb. We suspect there was a team behind it. Rigging a truck to explode on that scale doesn’t get done like having the oil changed. We think three or four guys arranged this in the ten to twelve hours the truck was missing.”

  “The second big question, “ says Deedle, “is whether you were the intended target. Have you got enemies, Odell?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody at all? Think back. Has there been anyone you got into an argument with lately?”

  “Only Chief Webb.”

  “Forget Webb, we know he’s not a player in this. Think some more.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I did, I did think some more till it hurt, but nothing come of it.

  “Did you and Dean have an argument?”

  “No, we got along great. I only knew him a couple days, then he went away. There wasn’t time to be getting into arguments. He didn’t do this.”

  “But maybe a terrorist cell he’s involved with did,” says Kraus, with this look on his face that says he thinks I’m hiding something.

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I never met a terrorist.”

  “They look like you and me, Odell. Maybe you met a terrorist and didn’t see that he’s a terrorist. That’s no crime. They make themselves invisible in society, that’s how they do the terrible things they do without anybody suspecting the plans they’re making for mass destruction and terror.”

  “Well, then, maybe I did, but I wouldn’t know which one it was.”

  They looked at me like they’re disappointed somehow, but there’s nothing I can tell them about this bomb that I know because I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything and I didn’t do anything.

  “I want to see Lorraine.”

  “Would that revive your memory, seeing her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You and her an item, Odell?”

  “She’s my fiancée . . .pretty soon.”

  “Is that right?” Deedle looked over at Kraus. “The sister of a terrorist and the victim of a terrorist bomb are going out together. That sounds like a movie plot.”

  “Maybe you should get an agent,” says Kraus, smiling a little.

  “You guys are agents,” I said. They looked at me a long while, then at each other, then Kraus says, “We know about the drugs, Odell.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Your girlfriend’s phone has been bugged this last week, just in case her brother called. We know where you and her and Donald Hubert Youngman, aka Donnie Darko, went Monday evening.”

  “Huh?”

  Deedle reached in his pocket and brung out a picture he handed to me, and there we are together, me and Lorraine and Donnie. “That was taken at the Fifteenth Street ATM. Those pinhole cameras keep getting better and better.”

  “Nice tone,” says Kraus. “Nice clarity. That’s evidence of intent to parlay money into drugs, Odell, and there you are, right in the middle.”

  “Mmmm. . .”

  “We know about Lorraine’s sideline in delivery of narcotics to the state pen and her relationship with the guy on the inside that passes it on.”

  “Relationship?”

  “That’d be a sexual relationship,” says Deedle.

  “It starts with two people working in the same place,” says Kraus, “and develops over coffee in the cafeteria to a mutual interest in making untaxed money on the side, and before you know it the whole enterprise ends up getting those concerned ten to fifteen. That’s a fairly young woman there, Odell. You wouldn’t see each other for a long time.”

  “Relationship with who?”

  “Mean to say
you didn’t know about that, Odell? She’s your fiancée, after all. She didn’t tell you about the guy she’s been humping, her boss?”

  “Cole?”

  “That’s the guy. He’ll get a longer term than her, being her superior. You don’t look good, Odell.”

  “I didn’t do anything . . .”

  “Right, you’re an innocent bystander. Got your picture right here, standing by innocently while your girl the mule takes out more cash for the new inflated price to pay her supplier. It looks bad, Odell. At the very least I’d say this leaves you wide open for a charge of conspiracy, trafficking, aiding and abetting, take your pick.”

  “Three to five if the judge doesn’t like you,” says Deedle. “Maybe you can all wave to each other through the bars.”

  Kraus gave the picture back to Deedle then leaned close to me. “This can all go away if you’ll cooperate. We want the big fish. You’re a minnow, we know that, only it looks bad the way you’ve been associating with criminals this past week, beginning with Dean. Either you’re part of it, Odell, or you’re the unluckiest son of a bitch I ever met.”

  “I’m unlucky,” I told him.

  “That’s what I’d say too,” says Deedle.

  I didn’t know what to think. Lorraine has been humping Cole Connors, and I just told these guys she’s my fiancée. They were right – it looked real bad, like I’m some kind of idiot blinded by love as they say. “I’m unlucky in love,” I told them.

  “That’s just the beginning of your bad luck, Odell.”

  “It could get a whole lot worse,” says Kraus.

  They both of them were looking very grim now, like I handed in a lousy report card and have to take some bad consequences on account of it. I needed a friend, but who was there I could call and have him help me out here? Then it come to me who.

  “I want to talk to Agent Jim Ricker.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Agent Jim Ricker from Homeland Security.”

  “The folks at Homeland don’t generally refer to themselves as agents.”

  “Well that’s what he said, he’s Agent Jim Ricker.”

  “And how do you happen to know Agent Ricker?”

  “He called me on the phone a few times, and I called him once.”

  “We don’t have any record of those conversations, Odell. We bugged your phone too and that name does not feature in our recordings.”

  “Well, then, you must not have been listening close enough. Pretty soon after I got my phone he called me up and says he’s Agent Jim Ricker and I have to tell him everything about what’s happening.”

  “This is your new cell phone you’re talking about.”

  “Uhuh.”

  “And this Agent Jim Ricker has held conversations with you on that cell?”

  “Two or three times now.”

  Kraus gave a nod to Deedle, who got up and strolled over to the window which has got the blinds drawn against the bright sun out there. He took out a phone and starts talking to someone while Kraus keeps looking at me like the report card has gone from D to F minus. “See, Odell, when you got that cell last week, the minute your name and number were registered it prompted an alert, a red flag, you might say, given that you’re a person of interest to us. Your conversations on that phone, as well as on the landline out at Dean Lowry’s place, have all been monitored, and I have to tell you now, Odell, there’s no record of conversations with a Jim Ricker. We’d know if any such thing happened. That’s our job.”

  “Well . . . he called me, I’m not lying. You can hook me up to a lie detector. It was Agent Jim Ricker. He calls me up once in a while to let me know he’s keeping an eye on me with the satellite.”

  “The satellite.”

  “Uhuh, up there in the sky, a whole bunch of them watching over me.”

  “Like guardian angels, Odell?”

  “Kinda, yeah, maybe.”

  Deedle come back over and says, “Just been talking to Homeland Security, Odell. They don’t have any Agent Jim Ricker, definitely no such person working there.”

  “Sure there is. I talked to him two, three times.”

  Kraus says to Deedle, “Odell has just been telling me that Agent Ricker keeps a watchful eye on him by way of spy satellites, a whole bunch of them, isn’t that right, Odell?”

  “That’s right, that’s what he told me.”

  “Even though our intercept failed to monitor any such conversations with any such person. We have the best equipment in the world, Odell, your taxpayer dollar at work.”

  “Well, it isn’t working right,” I told them, getting kind of steamed about how they aren’t believing me concerning this important person.

  “What’s his number?” asks Kraus.

  “Uh, I forget. I had it entered in the phone like you can do nowadays, but the phone’s gone and I can’t remember the number.”

  “The number we’d have a record of if calls ever came through on your phone.”

  “The calls did come through . . .Give me a lie-detector test.” Then I thought how they could ask me about did I know where Dean is, like Chief Webb asked me, so maybe I better not get lie-detected after all. “Only you can just ask me that one question, not any others.”

  “Hardly seems worthwhile setting up a polygraph for just one question, Odell. We heard you had one of those and burst out crying. We wouldn’t want to upset you all over again for one piddling question that we already know the answer to.”

  “You do?”

  “We do. You’re bullshitting us, Odell, and we don’t like that.”

  “I’m not lying! He really called me . . .Maybe he’s got one of those . . .those machines that make you not be able to understand what he’s saying . . .”

  “A scrambler?”

  “A scrambler, yeah, he must have one of those.”

  “Odell, our ability to suck it up on landline and cell and satellite calls is unparalleled. We can listen in on any conversation, anytime, anywhere in the world. You did not receive calls from any Jim Ricker. You received calls on Lowry’s phone and your cell from Donnie D, Chief Webb, Lorraine Lowry and Chet Marchand and that’s all. We’ve looked into Chet Marchand and he’s told us he came out to talk with Dean about his conversion to Islam. He came out again when he learned you’d been impersonating Dean, and he took pity on you because he thinks you’re a disturbed person, Odell, so he gave you a cell phone to help you build up your customer base and mow more lawns. If there’s anyone watching over you like a guardian angel, Odell, it’s Chet Marchand and his boss, Bob Jerome. Those two have got an interest in you based on their religious faith and belief in good works. We know Mr Marchand invited you to attend a big revival meeting in Topeka on July Fourth, that’s an invitation that isn’t extended to just anybody.”

  All of a sudden I understood! It was so clear it’s like a light turned on inside my head. “I’m bait . . .” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jim Ricker told me I’m bait for flushing out Dean . . . That’s why they want me at the big Topeka meeting, because Senator Ketchum is gonna be there to make a speech . . .and Dean wants to kill him . . . so maybe you think I’m gonna help Dean do that . . .?”

  Kraus was looking kind of pissed now. “Nobody told you you’re bait. Dean wouldn’t come within a mile of you, Odell, not unless he’s retarded, which clearly he isn’t. Messed up, maybe, but not retarded. Jim Ricker told you nothing because Jim Ricker doesn’t exist. Most people, Odell, they give up their imaginary friends by the time they’re six or eight.”

  “He’s not my imaginary friend. He’s got a daughter, a nine-year-old daughter that’s got the same ring tone on her phone as I picked for mine, he told me – Greensleeves.”

  “Greensleeves?”

  I started whistling it for them but quit when they gave each other this long look that says I don’t whistle so good.

  “Odell, listen up. Your friend Jim would need to have equipment of incredible sophistication to evade our scanners.
No such conversation about his daughter took place because we have no record of it. This man does not exist, so let’s move on.”

  “He has got incredible equipment, or how else could he know what kind of ring tone I had on my phone?”

  “That’d have to be something pretty new on the market,” says Deedle, “and we know about everything that’s out there, all the gadgets. Odell, we invent most of whatever is the latest and greatest, and what you’re describing is something out of a James Bond movie. Don’t tell us about equipment, we know.”

  “You guys invent stuff?”

  “Not us directly, the National Security Agency, they’re the backroom boys that come up with all the sniffers and scoop-ers, all the filters and fine-tuners. Nothing gets by their equipment, Odell, so don’t try and bluff us into thinking someone can. No more bullshitting.”

  “Well, I wasn’t.”

  “Sure you were,” says Kraus. “No more fairy tales, Odell. You’re holding something back and we want to know what it is. Nobody walks into the life of a terrorist with car trouble and gets to be such an instant friend he gets roped in to take care of business while the terrorist goes off somewhere with his cell buddies to plot against a high-level member of the United States government. That just doesn’t happen in the real world, Odell, so start telling us the real story. You are in a world of shit, son, only you don’t seem to realize it.”

  “Am not.”

  They looked at me like two judges at a dog show, only the dog has gone and peed on their shoes so now he has got no chance for a blue ribbon at all. The truth is, I was real upset about how they are not believing me even though I didn’t tell them a single lie so far. And I’m not the only one in trouble here – Lorraine has gone and been found out about the drugs and this will finish her career as a prison guard. Cole Connors I didn’t care about, or Donnie D, they knew what they’re doing, but now Lorraine will hate my guts. But then she must not have cared about my guts anyway because she’s been humping Cole all along . . .

  I felt very bad about that. I had gone and let myself fall for an unsuitable person. Again. Why am I like this? And now everyone will know about my stupidass ways and how dumb I have been regarding all this that has happened here. A giant ear has been listening to every dumb thing I said, practically listening in to my brain thinking stuff, so now the only secret I have got left is about Dean being dead and where he’s buried, which is another big worry on top of all the rest. If I got blown out of the house as far as the cottonwoods, that means there must have been cops and rescue workers all around those trees, right where Dean got covered over. But that was two days ago now, and Kraus and Deedle are not acting like they know where Dean is, so maybe nobody noticed that fresh soil that slid down into the wash. So I have still got this one ace up my sleeve.