“I don’t think I’d celebrate something like that.”
“Okay. You’ve won the lottery.”
“Never play it. It’s a poor man’s tax.”
“Well. That leaves only one possibility. You’ve slipped off the yoke, dumped the burden, shrugged the monkey from your back. Momma still won’t give him up, but at least now you’ve warned her. You’ve cleared your conscience.”
She tugged a doughnut free of its neighbor and took a bite. The sugar glistened on her lips.
“Did she know already?” she asked.
“She said Quinton would never get involved with people like that.”
“Some son. You’d think he would have warned her.”
“If he’s anything like what they tell me, he wouldn’t care.”
“But you’re thinking, Here’s another brick in the wall. She’s freaked; she’ll call him now. ‘Who’s these people trying to kill you, Quinton?’ Your visit is almost as good as a visit from them. Don’t get cocky. Keep low. Knoxville is absolutely the worst place to be right now.”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said. She licked her fingertips. “I don’t agree, and I’ll give you the reason why.”
“Why?”
“You. You, Ruzak. You’re the reason why. He knows you’re a PI, but unless Isabella has told him, he doesn’t know whom you’re working for. For all he knows, you’re working for them.”
“But why would some fascist wacko hit man hire a PI?”
She ignored the question. “So instead of defusing the situation, you’ve actually ratcheted it up a notch. Now he’s got to know what the deal is with you. You’ve turned an option into an imperative. And the truly disturbing thing is, while you have no clue where he is, he knows exactly where you are.”
“My goal,” I said with deliberateness, “has always been the safety of my client.”
“How noble of you.”
“I’ll give you the reason for the doughnuts.”
“You want to make me fat.”
“Isabella refuses protection. Nothing more I can do there. I’ve warned his mother about the gang, so there’s nothing more I can do there. I’ve tried to convince Farrell not to take the law into his own hands. All I can do there. I guess the only thing I could still do is keep turning over rocks to nail down his whereabouts, but it’s like you said, there isn’t much point to that. What would I do when I found him?”
“So I was right. ‘My conscience is clear. Time for a doughnut!’ ”
“I see what you’re saying, though. The issue might not be so much what I would do if I found him. It’s what he would do if he found me.”
“No.” She was shaking her head. Her hair swayed with the movement. I smelled peaches.
“When he finds you, Ruzak,” she said. “When.”
6:03 p.m.
“Some people might say I have a savior complex,” I began when I met with Dr. Fredericks.
“And you suspect that could be the basis of your feelings for Felicia?”
“No, I suspect the opposite.”
“It must be love because she doesn’t need you to save her?”
“Right. Well, it rules out the complex as the basis. It could be something else that isn’t. Like the unattainable object thing.”
“Let me ask you this. What would you do if Bob were out of the picture?”
I was startled. “How did you know his name?”
“You told me.”
“I did?” I didn’t remember telling her that. What else had I told her that I couldn’t remember? And why did that bother me?
“What would you do?” she asked again.
“I’m not sure we made the rule because of Bob.”
“The rule about keeping your personal lives personal.”
“But then she broke it. I’m invited to dinner.”
“Why do you think she broke it?”
“Bob.”
“He wants to meet you.”
“I’m being trotted out. I figure she’s thinking he’ll relax once he gets a look at me.”
“Slapping the perception down with the reality.”
“I’m a little nervous about it.”
“Of course. Bob is a threat.”
“Well. I don’t even know the guy.”
“And you’re nervous because…”
“It’s not just his perceptions getting the smackdown.”
“Out of sight, out of mind. There is a risk you will stop seeing him as a mere obstacle and regard him as a real human being.”
“Oh. My empathy will crush my desire?”
“Or make your desire all the more untenable.”
“It’s the suffering in silence. You’re the only person on earth who knows, except my dog, and I felt a little better last time getting it off my chest, but within a couple days it was back.”
“What was back?”
“The suffering.”
“If you told her how you felt, what do you think she’d do?”
“Hit me.”
“Would she quit? Cut you out of her life?”
“Honestly, I think she would tell me I wasn’t; I didn’t; I don’t. She would be really mad at first, and then it would get nasty.”
“She’d tell Bob and Bob would hit you?”
I looked at her. I hardly had been until that moment. Was she making a joke? Her expression was serious as she stared at me over her half-glasses. Ms. Cohen used to ride her bike to school, even in the winter. It had a basket attached to the handlebars. She wore a black wrap when she rode, like Dorothy’s witch. Da-da-da Da-da-dum. And your little dog, too!
“She would tell Bob, but I don’t think he’d hit me,” I said. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe he would. But I meant nasty in the sense that she’d be all like ‘Poor Ruzak.’ You know, condescending, treat me with kid gloves, and maybe even take me on as a project, try to find a girl for me. I’ll tell you what I cling to. I cling to the possibility that it isn’t love—that’s it’s just a bad crush. And crushes are like high fevers: Wait ’em out and eventually they’ll pass.”
“And how would that make you feel? If the feeling passed.”
I thought about it.
“Sad.”
“Then maybe you should ask yourself if you’re in love with her or in love with love.”
Deep. I chewed on my bottom lip.
“You know about the button,” I said.
“Button?”
“The hypothetical button. You press it and someone disappears. No one knows you did it. No consequences. Just poof and they’re gone.”
“Bob?”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“What if I suggested to you that Bob is not the obstacle?”
“You’re saying…” What was she saying? “You’re saying Felicia is the obstacle? She’s the object and the obstacle?”
Dr. Fredericks leaned forward in her chair.
“I have a suggestion, Teddy,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Sure,” I replied. What was I paying her a hundred bucks an hour for?
“I’d like you to write something for Felicia.”
“What? Like a confession?”
“If you want to think of it that way. A heartfelt note, expressing your feelings for her, your thoughts about the situation. You never have to show it to her—or even to me.”
“So it’s to her but for me.”
“Yes. That’s it.” She seemed pleased I got it so quickly.
“I’m not really seeing it, Doc.” What was this? Why did I always resist opportunities for personal growth? Why the native reluctance? Was the status quo that seductive? The older I got, the more I doubted people’s capacity for change. Little by little, day by day, my inherent optimism eked away, worn down by the inescapable friction of all the conflicting evidence: Human life was infinitesimally insignificant and grossly overvalued; the rhymeless, reasonless of suffering; the seemingly bottomless well of human avarice and crue
lty. I wasn’t there yet, but I could see the distant shore—the desert island of bitter cynicism and despair. I hadn’t signed up with Dr. Fredericks so much to change as to conserve, to drop anchor before I beached. “The Love Song of T. Alan Ruzak.” The test had come, and my luck it was an essay and not the multiple-choice I’d hoped for.
Because this is what I wanted. This is what I was after. Every man, if he was honest with himself, would give the same answer: to be tried in the crucible; to be tested to the limits of his endurance; to face the ultimate imponderable of existence with true grace and fathomless courage; to risk everything for the simplest of things.
“What have you got to lose?” she asked.
“I could come up with half a dozen things, humiliation being near the top of the list, but okay. What the heck. I’ll try.”
THURSDAY
1:47 p.m.
Forty-five minutes southwest of Knoxville on I-75 there is a rest stop with clean facilities and a well-maintained picnic area, shaded by pine and oak and maple trees, with concrete tables, barbecue pits, and a trail that wound through some woods. The heat was brutal, even in the shade. Archie’s tongue hung from his mouth as he pulled me along the trail, his nose a couple inches from the ground. I kept one eye on the picnic area and another on the path, on the lookout for poison ivy and rattlesnakes. I liked nature but didn’t completely trust it. Like a lot of people, I suffered from the illusion that I was distinct from it. There was me here and there was the natural world there.
The path brought us back around to the tables. A family was sitting at one. Mom was digging through the cooler and Dad was working on a bag of potato chips. Both kids had electronic games; their thumbs worked the buttons. An older man was walking his dog. He was wearing plaid shorts and a tan T-shirt—the old man, not the dog. The dog was some kind of poodle mix, all the rage lately. Archie ignored him. Maybe he associated other dogs with the trauma of the pound.
I sat at the table closest to the woods. Archie thumped down between my legs and watched the kids. When I was a kid on road trips, I didn’t have the handheld video games. I had word-search puzzles and a pack of playing cards, a couple of books, and car games that usually came with little magnets, like Wooly Willy.
A burly guy wearing a blue blazer over a tight white T-shirt came out of the building. Sunglasses. Short-cropped bleached hair. Pointy goatee, not bleached. Heavy-duty hiking boots. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one.
I waited for him to finish his smoke. When I stood up, Archie stood up with me and nearly sent me sprawling. The guy was young, on closer inspection: early twenties, with acne-scarred cheeks and a receding chin the goatee was meant to mask. A bodybuilder type, wide across the chest, narrow at the hips. His blazer was a size too small, and I could see the bulge of his shoulder holster on the left side.
“I’m Ruzak,” I said. Archie sniffed at his pants leg, his tail slowly swaying.
“Follow me,” he said. His accent was thick. A local boy. I followed him inside the welcome center, keeping a step or two behind. The lady behind the information desk shot an angry look at Archie: No dogs allowed inside! We exited through the front doors and I tailed him to a creamy white Lexus parked in the meager shade of a young oak tree at the southernmost end of the row.
He stopped beside the car. “No dog,” he said.
“I thought we were going to talk in the back,” I said.
“It’s a shorthair,” he said. “A shedder.”
“We could talk in my car,” I offered.
He jerked his head toward the sapling.
“Tie him up over there.”
“It’s hot,” I protested.
“It’s in the shade. He’ll be okay.”
So I tied Archie to the tree. He wasn’t happy about it; he wasn’t used to being tied to anything. I rubbed his head and spoke soothingly to him and promised him I wouldn’t be long. Then I stepped over to the car and slid across the backseat. He sat down beside me, closed the door, and told me to put my hands on my head. The man sitting in the passenger seat didn’t turn around. I saw a sliver of his profile: clean-cut, a strong jaw, a much more finely developed chin than his bodyguard. His hair was dark and closely trimmed. His cologne smelled expensive.
The bodyguard told me to scoot to the edge of the seat. He patted me down with the alacrity of someone who did it often.
“He’s clean,” he said to the guy up front.
“Thank you, Benton,” the guy said. He still hadn’t turned around. “Take a walk around, all right?”
Benton got out and closed the door. Glancing through the tinted window, I saw Archie leap up, expecting me; still, the tip of his tail twitched as he strained on the leash toward Benton. Benton ignored him. The car was idling, the air conditioning going full blast. It must have been twenty degrees cooler inside.
The man up front finally turned. Middle forties, maybe, with sky blue eyes and finely chiseled features. Except for the dark hair, very Aryan. He stuck his hand toward me. Cold fingertips, moist palm.
“Sorry for all this cloak-and-dagger silliness,” he said. He spoke with an accent, though it wasn’t nearly as pronounced as Benton’s. “But you have no idea. FBI, Homeland Security, ATF, NAACP, you name it. Worse since the election. Ten times as bad, while at the same time recruitment is ten times as good. You have no idea what the last election has done for us. Name’s Dayton.”
“Ruzak,” I said.
“Right,” he said, nodding slowly. He cut the word into two syllables. “That Jewish?”
“Polish.”
“Still could be Jewish.”
“My mom was a Southern Baptist.”
“What about your daddy?”
I hesitated. “Catholic. Lapsed.”
“What about you?”
“Brought up on that good ol’ time religion,” I said honestly.
He nodded. I wasn’t sure what the nod meant. Had I verified information he already had? Or was it more innocent than that, a “Good thing he ain’t no Papist or Jew” nod?
“I appreciate you meeting with me like this, Mr. Dayton,” I said.
He waved his hand. He wore a pinkie ring with the insignia of the SS on it.
“Just Dayton,” he said.
“Though it didn’t have to be like this,” I went on. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to meet me in person. We could have covered it in five minutes over the phone.”
“Phones can be tapped. E-mails intercepted. Letters seized. This is pretty sensitive stuff, and I have no intention of giving the government any ammunition.”
“Sensitive because…”
“Because we have no affiliation, formal, casual, or anything in between, with Kein Mitleid. Bunch of punks and thugs and gangbangers. Thick-necked, no-brain skinheads. A third in prison, a third on probation, and the rest on welfare, dealing meth and stocking up on semiautomatics for the coming race war.”
“But you used to be,” I said. “Affiliated with them.”
He shook his head. “The only connection is more of a coincidence. Richie Rache was the head of security for the Nation before he had a falling-out with my predecessor. He was asked to leave. Six months later, he founded Kein Mitleid. Peeled off some of our membership, the radical element—good riddance—and recruited some of his old buds from his biker days.”
“What was the falling-out over?”
“Richie didn’t like the direction we were taking.”
“ ‘It’s about love, not hate’?”
He smiled proudly. “What do you think? That was all mine. Because it is about love, Ruzak. That’s what we’re all about. Love for this great country. Love for our great race. We built civilization as we know it. Think about it. Art, architecture, democracy, the sciences, the great Christian religion. We made the world what it is today.”
“Jesus was a Jew,” I said.
“Jesus was a Jew.” He nodded. “But what was Christianity before the white man got hold of it? An apocal
yptic death cult consisting of a handful of crazy Jews. What was anything before the white man got hold of it? That’s why we say there’s no such thing as a Jewish civilization or an African civilization or an Arab civilization. It’s a nonsensical construct, Ruzak, like saying ‘white civilization.’ ‘White civilization’ is a redundancy. Civilization by definition was created by and exists for the white race.”
“And how’s that different from what Kein believes?”
“See, that’s the kind of thinking that your uneducated masses fall into. There isn’t much difference in ideology; it’s our means, not our ends. Kein Mitleid wants war. We want peace—another invention of civilization, right? They want to kill every Jew and black and Latino and Asian and Native American and Muslim; we just want them to leave.”
“Leave?”
“America is a white nation. Conceived by whites. Founded by whites. Fought for and died for by whites. Our platform calls for the voluntary relocation of all nonwhite peoples. That’s the humane approach. That’s the civilized approach.”
“And if they refuse to leave?”
“Then we have no choice but to force them to leave.”
“But who would do the forcing?”
He looked at me like I was a moron.
“In another thirty years, unless our proposals are adopted, white people will be the minority in this country, Mr. Ruzak. You want to live to see that day? You want your children to live in that day? We’re not against anyone; we’re for white people.”
“Kein Mitleid is white,” I said. “Why aren’t you for them?”
He sighed. I just wasn’t getting it. He didn’t lose his temper, though. The guy was a model of self-restraint. He turned and looked out the window at Archie.
“What’s your dog’s name?” he asked.
“Archie.”
“Cute dog. Is he a tracker?”
“I wish. Then I could write him off on my taxes.”
He laughed. “Dogs are great. I have two.”
“Let me guess. German shepherds.”
He shook his head. “Bichons.” He threw an arm over the back of the seat and turned his bright blue eyes full upon me.
“I thought you wanted to talk about Quinton Stiles,” he said.
The Highly Effective Detective Crosses the Line Page 9
