Dynamite Road

by Andrew Klavan

  “Hmph,” I said. “A mystery girl.”

  I got only a long silence in answer. Weiss—himself distracted, preoccupied, far away—raised his glass with one hand, lightly drummed the desktop with the fingers of the other.

  “She have any reason to kill herself?” I asked.

  After another moment, he glanced over at me. “Fear,” he said. “That’s what I think. I think she might’ve been afraid of someone.”

  “Afraid of…?”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t know. But then he said: “Well, there’s this guy they call the Shadowman…” and he hid himself in his scotch.

  Now, back then, as an aspiring author, I always liked to think of myself as a fly-on-the-wall type of guy: a quiet listener, an astute observer. I tried to be that way at any rate. And, in fact, hanging out on the wall at the Agency, I had actually heard, or overheard, this name—the Shadowman—spoken from time to time. Or uttered, I would say. Uttered in a tone of great mystery and melodrama. From all I could gather, he was someone from an old case Weiss had worked when he was on the force. In fact, it was supposed to have something to do with the reason he’d left the force. I’d never have been bold enough to ask him about it outright. I was young and, to be honest, Weiss, with his street wisdom and gravity and expertise…he kind of overawed me. But here he’d mentioned it himself. Plus I sensed he’d called me in here to talk things out for his own sake, his own clarity.

  So—trying for a worldly, ironic tone—I said, “And who, pray tell, is the Shadowman?”

  The big man leaned out of his whiskey, leaned back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “depends who you ask.” He gave an expansive wave with his drink hand. “According to the cops—most of the cops—he’s bullshit. Not a real person. Or a composite of several different people. Or just something a journalist made up. A—whatdayacallit—fantasy.”

  I nodded. I sipped my scotch thoughtfully. I nodded some more. “Kind of like the guy who killed Wally Spender, you mean.”

  At that, Weiss’s chin rose and fell. Which, coming from him, was tantamount to a burst of raucous laughter. I think I’d actually managed to amuse him. “Exactly. Exactly like the guy who killed Wally Spender. Only this guy…You remember the ‘South Bay Massacre’?”

  I didn’t remember. I was on the East Coast when it happened. I was just a kid. But this had also been mentioned in Agency gossip now and then, it was part of the stuff I’d overheard and half heard. “Yeah,” I said. “Something. Illegal immigrants who were drowned or something.”

  “Eight of them. Eight children.” Weiss’s chin remained sunk on his chest now. He frowned down at his desktop. “They weren’t drowned. They were shot. Twice in the head, each one. Their bodies were dumped in the ocean, washed in on the tide. Woman went out to walk her dog on China Beach one morning, there were the corpses bobbing in the surf a few yards offshore.”

  I let out a soft whistle. “Jesus. Who were they?”

  “Just kids. From Thailand. The theory was they were being brought in to sell as…you know: slaves, sex slaves. Whatever. No one ever really knew. The theory was that the deal had gone wrong somehow and the seller needed to get rid of the evidence. That was the theory. The oldest one was maybe eleven. They probably killed her first while the smaller ones watched and waited for their turn.”

  I didn’t say anything. But I felt it; I felt it go up my spine. Images, you know: the children waiting helplessly; the red line of sunrise lying on the water and the little bodies lifting and falling on the waves. It was chilling to think of it, especially sitting there like that, with Weiss, alone. The Agency around us was dark and empty and silent. In the night, through the wall of high-arched windows, the city’s skyscrapers were a haphazard checkerboard of light and dark. The clouds—these huge, moonstruck clouds—were tumbling past on the wind. Traffic noise rose to us, muted car horns, rumbling engines, the shock and sizzle of the electric streetcars. It all played on my imagination, gave me a sense of tumult and frantic hurry all around us and us isolated in this one place, this one good, bright, warm place alone in the wild world. Sitting there, talking about those corpses in the surf—it was an eerie feeling, like listening to a fireside ghost story on a stormy night.

  “We had nothing,” said Weiss. “The media went nuts but…what could we do? We had nothing. No leads, no way to trace the kids. One witness. A Chinese fisherman. He said he saw a boat, a thirty-foot cruiser, anchored off the South Bay the night before. He saw a man on deck, moving around. But in the moonlight he was just a shadow. That’s what the press picked up: the shadow of a man. The Shadowman.” Weiss made a face, brushing off his own thoughts. “You know the media, the way they are. With something like that, a slaughter like that, kids involved…All the feature stories that keep the thing going. They started speculating about the Shadowman, was he a hired gun? A whack specialist? You know the sort of thing. Then this one guy, Jeff Bloom, did this big Sunday feature in the Chronicle. He had, like, one unnamed source and he did this huge piece. According to him, the Shadowman was responsible for half the unsolved murders on this side of the country. ‘An unstoppable Death Machine,’ that’s what he called him. No matter who you were, no matter how much security you had, if you were in Witness Protection, if you were in Fort Knox—didn’t matter—he could get to you. Even the bad guys who hired him were afraid of him. That was the story anyway.”

  I glanced over my shoulder as a sudden gust rattled the windowpanes. “Sure,” I said softly. “Sure.”

  “And meanwhile the cops are saying, ‘Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, this is all made up….’ But at the same time…” He finished with a shrug.

  “At the same time, someone actually did kill those children,” I said.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Weiss. “That’s what made it so hard to deal with. In the end, it was like: There actually was a Shadowman even if there wasn’t.”

  I hesitated a moment before I responded to that. I was always a little careful around the Agency. Careful, I mean, about what I said. I never wanted to wax too philosophical, sound too erudite, like a snob or an egghead or something. I mean, this wasn’t college anymore and I wanted to fit in. But again, the atmosphere—the two of us alone in the bright center of the night—it seemed to lend itself to philosophizing.

  “Well, you know, the experience of being human isn’t necessarily a rational one,” I ventured. “Some things are real whether they’re real or not.”

  Weiss gave a hard laugh. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Immediately, I saw I had made a mistake. “What is that? Is that, like, if I turn my back on the table is it still there? Is that what they teach you at Berkeley?”

  I felt my cheeks get hot. “Well, I’m just saying…”

  “What, are we supposed to smoke some dope now or something?”

  “I just mean that…Part of the reality of a thing is our perception of it. It’s…it’s an interface.”

  “An interface. You’re an interface. Real whether it’s real or not! For fuck’s sake.” Weiss blustered out another laugh. “I’m the king of Romania.”

  I spent, oh, a good half hour that night banging my forehead against the wall of my apartment. To punish myself for being such a callow buffoon in front of him. I thought for sure the story of my brilliant philosophical insight would spread throughout the Agency by morning and I’d be a laughingstock. Which just killed me, because I wanted so much to be a part of the place.

  See, they were big figures to me in those days, Weiss and Bishop both. They loomed large in my youthful imagination: men who had touched evil and seen death and were wise to the wheelwork of the world. Some days I even talked like one or the other of them, or walked or dressed like him, tried him on for size. In any case, I thought about them a lot, about who they were, about what they were like.

  I could be sanctimonious about Bishop at times. He was a hard man to warm to, very intimidating. It was pleasant to feel morally superior to his violent nature and that cool
and peculiar conscience of his. But I was honest with myself. I knew I admired him. And I envied him too. Hell, just his way with women—I’d have sold my soul for a piece of that. Not to mention his physical courage, the bikes, the planes, the fear he inspired in other men. He had an air of danger around him, a lethal virility—traits much to be coveted by a bookish young man who was trying to make some kind of person of himself.

  As for Weiss, he was older, more a mentor or father figure or what have you. I was better educated than he was, probably even smarter in some academic, theoretical way. But I could only stand in awe of his mean-street wisdom. That heavy deadpan of his, that deep, weary, sympathetic gaze: You could just tell he understood humanity to the bone. He knew people cheated, even the best of them, and that even the best of them lied. He knew they eyed each other jealously and dreamed foul dreams. He knew they were keenly aware of the corruption of their neighbors and wonderfully blind to their own. But more important than any of that, he knew how to accept this in them, in each person and in all of them together and in himself. Nothing human was alien to him, none of it shocked him. He was no cynic—the good things mattered to him—love and justice—they mattered to him a lot. He just knew how things were, is all. Stone stood still and water ran and the earth was a kingdom of deception and that was that. In those days I would’ve given anything to have seen what Weiss had seen, to know what Weiss knew.

  So the idea that I’d made a fool of myself in front of him, that he’d laugh at me, talk about me, spread the word that I was a shit-talking college boy who thought trees fell in forests without making a sound, well, it was pretty crushing stuff.

  But, as it turned out, I underestimated Weiss’s generosity. Oh, he told the story all right, a little while later. And I did get nudged and chuckled at around the office for a while. But in Weiss’s version, the foolishness of my university education redeemed itself by its surprising usefulness. Because, while I hadn’t added anything to his thoughts about the Shadowman, he always maintained that, sitting there babbling my philosophy at him that night, I had accidentally solved The Case of the Spanish Virgin.

  Twenty-Three

  Bishop, meanwhile, walked into the Clover Leaf Bar.

  He scanned the place as he stepped over the threshold. It was a rathole, he thought. The rathole heart of this rathole city. A narrow corridor dead-ending at the shithouse doors. A room just wide enough for the row of stools at the rail and a couple of four-man tables behind them. Grime-black linoleum on the floors, scarred wood paneling on the walls. Country music on the jukebox. Even with the front door propped open to let the night air in, the place was stifling. It stank of cigarettes and beer.

  There were a couple of mountainous hoohas at the bar, one in his Airborne jacket, the other in hunting camouflage. They lifted their bushy beards out of their Millers. Glanced at Bishop, figured, yeah, they could take him, and sank back into their drinks. There was another veteran there, a wiry hophead. And then the goon, down at the end, in the shadows: Hirschorn’s goon—the hatchet-faced gorilla Bishop had talked to at the airport. He made no sign to Bishop when he entered. He just raised his bourbon to hide his smile. His eyes gleamed.

  As for Chris Wannamaker, he was at a table at the rear. One arm flung over his chair back, legs stretched out. Jeans and a cut-off tee, a white cowboy hat. Muscles and his snake tattoo. He was with a couple of other guys. They were all three laughing loudly. One of the other guys was also a North Country pilot, a guy named Matt. Matt lit up when he saw Bishop.

  “Hey, Kennedy,” he shouted. He waved Bishop over.

  Chris froze where he was when he heard the name. The grin dropped right off his face. He never took his eyes off Bishop after that. Bishop stopped at the bar, ordered a beer, waited for it, lit a cigarette, walked over to the table—all the while, Chris never took his eyes off him.

  Bishop pulled a wooden chair up to the table, sat down with the others. He’d just come from Kathleen, just then. He gave Chris an easy smile. The easy smile said: Juice from your wife is still drying on my dick. Bishop wanted Chris to sense that so that Chris would get even angrier. Chris got angrier all right. He wasn’t even sure why. He just did. He looked at Bishop’s easy smile. He took a long pull of beer, seething. Bishop thought: Good.

  “Hey, Kennedy,” said Matt. He spoke loudly, right in Bishop’s ear. He made expansive, swaying gestures where he sat. He was drunk. “You can settle this right now for us. FAR 121. Does the reg say ‘Eight hours bottle to throttle’? Or is it, ‘I got my bottle, gimme that throttle’?”

  Matt and the other guy laughed hard. Bishop smiled with one corner of his mouth.

  “‘No pilot shall adjust his bottle and throttle at the same time,’” said the other guy. “Isn’t that it?”

  “Or with the same hand,” said Matt.

  More hearty laughter, Matt and the other guy both, rollicking back in their chairs, slapping the table. But not Chris. Chris kept glaring at Bishop, studying that easy smile, that tongue-in-cheek look of his, not knowing exactly what he was seeing, not knowing that he was seeing the thing about his wife’s juice, or maybe knowing and not really wanting to know.

  “Seems to me Chris is the one you want to talk to here,” Bishop said quietly. “I’ve seen his eight hours go by like it was no more’n lunchtime.”

  Ha-ha-ha, went Matt and the other guy. “Yeah,” said Matt. “I heard old man Hirschorn himself showed up to kick your ass on that one, Chris.” Ha-ha-ha, they went.

  “Now, Chris, I’d sure hate to think he was wasting his breath on you,” the other guy chimed in.

  “Hey, you know the three most useless things in life?” said Matt. “The altitude above you, the runway behind you…”

  “…and tits on a nun!” both men finished off at once.

  “Well, telling Chris to lay off the bottle—that’s the fourth one,” said Matt. “The fourth useless thing.”

  Bishop looked at Chris. Even with the laughter, even with the country music on the juke, he almost thought he could hear Chris breathing. He shifted his gaze past him to the goon at the bar. The goon hid his smile in his drink again. His eyes went right on gleaming. Bishop looked back at Chris. He wondered just how drunk he was, just how stupid.

  “Of course, they say altitude’s the one thing that’ll sober a man,” Bishop said. “At ten thousand feet, even a drunk won’t beat up his plane too bad.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Matt.

  “Not like he beats up his wife.”

  Matt and the other guy hardly knew what the fuck he was saying at this point. They were just laughing at everything. They were still laughing when Chris sprang to his feet.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Chris said.

  “Whoa, sit down, you’re making me dizzy,” said Matt.

  “Relax,” said Bishop mildly. “These are the jokes.”

  “That’s right, these are the jokes,” said the other guy. “Sit down.”

  “Well, just shut the fuck up about my wife,” said Chris. That was as far as he was going to take it. He wasn’t that drunk. He was about to sit down again. “And you can stop sniffing around her too,” he muttered. “Just stop sniffing around her.”

  Bishop dropped his cigarette to the linoleum, crushed it under his heel. “Well, sniffing around her’s a tough job—but someone’s got to do it.”

  That was it. That was all it took. Chris stood over him again. “Get up,” he said.

  “Aw, cut it out, Chris,” said Matt, trying to keep it light. “He’s just giving you shit.”

  “Stay the fuck out of it,” said Chris. “Get the fuck up,” he said to Bishop.

  “Now why would I do that?” Bishop said, tongue-in-cheek. “I’m right in the middle of drinking…”

  Chris grabbed Bishop’s T-shirt in his two hands. He yanked the smaller man to his feet. As he came up, Bishop punched Chris quickly in the throat. Chris’s eyes bulged. His cowboy hat flew off. He fell to the floor, gagging.

 
; Bishop sat down again. “…a goddamn beer,” he said.

  He sipped the beer. On the floor, Chris raised himself up on one knee and one hand. He clutched his throat with the other hand. He gagged, his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

  Matt tried on another weak laugh. But as he looked at Chris, he finally stopped laughing. He turned to Bishop.

  “Jesus, Kennedy,” he said. “You hit him in the throat.”

  “Did I?” said Bishop. He sipped his beer again.

  Over at the bar, the two fat hoohas had turned on their stools to watch. So far, they seemed to be enjoying the show. They glanced at each other from time to time and chuckled in appreciation. The hophead, meanwhile, bounced around on his toes and puffed a cigarette quickly. Hirschorn’s goon hid his smile in his bourbon.

  The bartender was a giant with a shaved head. The rest of him was all muscle and all of his muscles were covered with tattoos. Drying out a glass with a towel, he was watching like the others.

  “Don’t make me come over there, ladies,” he called over the music. He had a voice so deep it sounded as if he’d swallowed a bullfrog.

  Chris had now reached up, got hold of a chair back. He was pulling himself to his feet. Bishop came out of his beer with a satisfied “Ah!” and set it down.

  “You know I got a theory, Chris,” he said loudly. “Know what my theory is? My theory is: Any man that’s gotta take a hard hand to a woman must be ’cause he’s got a soft dick.” He looked at Chris amiably as the big man got his feet under him, stood. “That’s my theory. What do you think? You got an opinion on that?”

  Chris rubbed his throat, trying to get his breath steady. “You psycho motherfucker. You coulda killed me.”

  “Yeah, in fact, I could’ve killed you twice,” Bishop answered. “Once when you grabbed me and then again for good measure when you were down on the floor making that funny choking noise.”

  That made the bartender laugh, a big deep bullfrog laugh. “Oh brother,” he said. The hoohas chuckled too.