Middle Man

by David Rich

  “It’s time you learned to share. You’ll have your turn later,” I said.

  “Get up or I’ll pull you up.”

  I smiled at him and gave a look asking if he really wanted to try that: He didn’t. I had been there all morning, and every half hour or so, Agent Hanrihan came in to scold me or question me. He wore a blue blazer and striped tie and beige pants, which made him look like a security man at an NBA game. Agent Sampson followed him in. Her light hair was pulled back tight and clipped into a ponytail. I guessed she was about forty. Her face was lean and her skin was tight and smooth. She wore black slacks, a white shirt and a black jacket and heels that weren’t too high. She carried a coffee cup with both hands.

  “We’ve been looking for you. Why did you run away from Havre, Montana?” Hanrihan’s blond hair fell sideways across his forehead, surfer-dude style, but it was a false impression: He wasn’t laid back; he was a bully.

  “I didn’t like it there.”

  “Major Hensel told us you would cooperate.” He pulled one of the chairs facing the desk close to mine and sat down. He moved his bangs aside with a vain, practiced gesture. Agent Sampson had assumed my spot at the window. “Are you aware that it is unlawful for the Army to operate on American soil?”

  “I’m not in the Army.”

  “The military. A soldier in Havre had a rifle, a loaded rifle, which he was deployed to use. That is in direct violation of federal law.”

  “That soldier was shot and killed. That’s a violation of the law, too. Isn’t it?”

  The local police had handed me over to these two in the morning. The cops were extremely excited about the gun I took from the security guard, but the FBI prevailed. How did they spend the evening? Hanrihan was in love with himself and Sampson acted like she hated him. At dinner they must have looked like a couple married too long: silent and distracted.

  “We could arrest you right now, just for that. He was under your command. Major Hensel told us as much. That’s right. Your commanding officer threw you under the bus. Let’s talk about Frank Godwin. Why did you kill him?”

  “I don’t know. Why would I kill him?”

  “Maybe you thought he was behind the killing of your man in Montana and that’s why you rushed away. To get revenge.” He smiled with his mouth closed, and his breath blew noisily from his nose as if he had just exerted himself and was trying to hide it. My only job was to avoid saying anything until Major Hensel arrived. If I were in trouble for bringing along the sniper, it would be with him, not the FBI. Hanrihan went on. “Maybe you were trying to silence Frank Godwin. Maybe you were partners. You spent days conspiring with him just a short while ago. We know that. We have witnesses. Maybe you have a good reason. Maybe you were doing something for your country.”

  “Maybe we’re all on the same side,” I said. Hanrihan’s face lit up with the fake innocence of a thief who is asked to watch a suitcase at the airport.

  “Yes. Exactly. So tell us what is going on so we can all pull in the same direction. That’s all we ask.”

  Hanrihan’s hostility was just part of the package, but I could not understand why they were spending so much effort on me. Sampson kept looking out the window. This might have been her first corner-office experience, too. “It’s sort of a long story,” I said.

  “We have time. Tell it all. We’re on the same team.”

  “Well, I wasn’t a good kid. I admit that. And one time, there was this woman and she invited me over and well, y’know, she was kind of attractive, at least I thought so. Big hair, big breasts. You probably know the type. Perfume. And her husband was always out of town, so . . .”

  “That’s Godwin? Godwin’s wife seduced you?”

  “No. Was Godwin married? He didn’t strike me as a married guy.”

  Hanrihan was pissed off now. “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll arrest you. It’s that simple.”

  “If I do cooperate you’ll arrest me.”

  His eyes widened and he sat forward and did the thing with his bangs. “Are you saying you’re guilty?”

  “Of what?”

  “You just said you would incriminate yourself.” He spoke carefully, thinking he was reeling me in. Agent Sampson kept looking out the window.

  “No, I said you’re a bust-the-one-you’re-with kind of guy.”

  Agent Sampson’s shoulders went up as she suppressed a laugh. She said, “What was in the grave?” She was still looking out the window when she spoke, but she turned to hear my answer.

  “How many cars did you count?”

  “None. How many are there?”

  “There were forty-two out that window.”

  “What was in that grave?”

  Cops and child custody officials and officers and the master of all manipulators, Dan, had been questioning me my whole life, so I knew how to give answers that appeared to be born in ignorance. Sampson was on the right track, though Hanrihan regarded her questions as an intrusion.

  “A body?”

  “But it didn’t belong to the guy whose name was on the grave,” Sampson said. “Any idea who it was? The widow said you told her there was a mix-up and that’s why you were digging up the grave. Is that correct?”

  “Sounds like a mix-up to me. Unless you think she just couldn’t recognize the corpse. Was it in pretty bad shape?”

  Fortunately, Hanrihan felt the need to reassert his authority. “Who was the other dead man in Wisconsin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you run away if you’re innocent?”

  It was such a complicated question, but there was no use mentioning that to Hanrihan. He wanted to wrap it all up in one big confession and would hear anything else as a lie. I welcomed the stupidity because it was pushing back Sampson, who was closing in on the real questions.

  I said, “Ask her. Ask your partner.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s he talking about?”

  Sampson understood. She hesitated, deciding whether to explain it to him. It felt like she was measuring how much she hated him.

  Hanrihan got impatient. “Hell, you don’t understand him any more than I do.”

  Sampson said, “Why do you need snipers to dig up a dead body?”

  That was the question I dreaded, so I answered Hanrihan instead. “I ran because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Why didn’t you want to talk to the FBI?”

  “I don’t mind talking to the FBI. I didn’t want to talk to you. And I still don’t.”

  Sampson laughed. Hanrihan’s eyes got wide and the skin on his face pulled back. He showed her his bottom teeth, then he showed them to me. “Get up right now. You’re under arrest.” He stood over me and I jumped up fast so that we almost bumped heads. I put my hands forward for the cuffs, but he didn’t have any. He just stood there breathing through his nose like an angry bull. Sampson came close and put a hand on Hanrihan’s chest to move him back. “Calm down. You can’t fight him and arrest him.” Hanrihan brushed her hand aside. She didn’t mind. I walked away, toward the desk. She was studying me. “Besides,” she said, “he didn’t kill Godwin.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Godwin was shot from behind. And he was unarmed. Lieutenant Waters would have stepped right up and looked him in the eye and killed him up close. Now, you haven’t answered my question, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “What was that?”

  But before she could repeat the question, the door opened and Major Hensel entered.

  6

  Do you own a suit?”

  “Not since I was about ten.”

  Major Hensel and I rode downtown in a taxi, neither of us speaking after that brief exchange. The clouds were still solid in all directions, light gray and unmoving. Occasionally, the cabbie put on his windshield wipers for a few moments until they star
ted squeaking against the glass. It had taken Major Hensel only twenty minutes to spring me from Hanrihan and Sampson. If his silence was angry, I would find out soon enough. I hardly knew him. Even with the access this investigation gave me to personnel files, Major Hensel remained a cipher. The file I saw on the Camp Pendleton computers only contained his background page. He was born and raised in New York City and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at West Point, served in Iraq twice, in Army Intelligence units. The details were vague: attached to CIA, JSOC liaison, attached to Defense Intelligence Agency. The file had no commendations, no senior officer reports of any kind. It looked like it had been heavily edited, but it was not restricted above the level that the file on any intelligence officer might be. Based on that, I began filling in the picture of a career intelligence officer on the fast track, suddenly stopped at major yet given control of SHADE. One night I told Will Panos what I had found out. “You looked at the wrong file,” he said. “The Major graduated from Princeton and taught at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.”

  “I read his service file.”

  “So did I,” he said.

  We were in Texas at the time, interviewing a bloated colonel who did not want to talk to us about McColl, because, he asserted, the dead can’t defend themselves. We marched directly to the office we had been provided. Will worked the computer. No Arthur Hensel graduated from West Point or from Princeton. The service file that came up said he graduated from Middlebury College and worked as a civilian for DIA before joining the Army. Will found a medical file that listed him as wounded in action in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. He found more, each with a different story. When he went back to the service personnel file, it said Arthur Hensel was forty years old and had graduated from University of California at Berkeley. Another version said Arthur Hensel joined as an eighteen-year-old private in Arkansas and served in Korea and Okinawa. Will, who knew every form and regulation, wanted to start filing paperwork to get at the truth.

  “His name got put on other people’s files,” he said. “It’s a massive screwup.”

  But it was not a screwup. It was a plan, and a good one, better than some higher level of classification, which could be cracked. Maybe he was not Hensel at all. I could not even be sure how long he had been in the Army, whether he was due for promotion or was passed over and kept on under selective continuation. The mystery gave me confidence in him because it meant he was in control of his story and when he did give orders, they would be precise and specific; when he spoke, I would be hearing what he wanted me to hear without emotion or pomposity, anger or resentment. And it gave me a goal: Someday I would find out who he really was.

  Soon after the highways merged, the downtown skyline came into view, making the cloud canopy seem higher: Even the tallest buildings couldn’t pierce it. The taxi crept past a few car dealerships, warehouses, office buildings, and factories with ads painted on their sides, a low building advertising Morton Salt. I figured Major Hensel had information for me about the Montana shooting or Godwin’s shooting, so it would be a waste to try to fill the gaps myself. He occupied himself with his iPad. His belly filled his blue shirt and made the buttons work to keep it together. The suit, the shirt, the tie, made me think the Princeton identity or one just like it was true, but it could just as easily have been faked to throw the world off track. The thick temples of his eyeglasses blocked his eyes. I let my mind drift to salt and how it must be pretty much all the same, so the Morton people, way back, must have been brave to spend a lot of time and money giving salt a name. There must have been a salt war, though, with tears, bankruptcy, hope and deceit and stealing. Someone must have hated Morton and sworn revenge.

  The cabbie dropped us in front of a men’s store called Paul Stuart. The store was big and almost empty. Major Hensel looked over the salesmen and chose one with white hair and a mustache and told him to dress me like an investment banker, for work and for weekends. “Everything, shirts, belts, shoes and socks, the whole wardrobe. And, we’ll pay extra to have any alterations done immediately,” he said. “Whatever it takes. He’s flying out tomorrow.” That was news to me, but I nodded along as confirmation. “I’ll be back,” Major Hensel said, and he left.

  I was fresh meat, but the salesman was polite and soft-spoken and patient. He had polished the act. “Congratulations,” he said, “sounds like a promotion.”

  “Yes. I’m very excited.”

  “Which firm are you with?”

  “Voster M.E.A.,” I said. He nodded while he searched his memory for that firm. “Amalgamated,” I added, as if to help him out. He didn’t deserve it, but it just came out, and that lie was probably less hostile than claiming secrecy or, worst of all, answering, “The Marines.” Voster M.E.A. was the name Dan gave to his enterprises, for private consumption only. After a successful venture, he would return to whichever girlfriend he had at the time, pop the champagne and toast to Voster M.E.A. Amalgamated. Loosely translated, Latin voster mea est means “yours is mine” in English. I looked it up once and it’s pretty close to correct, close enough for the private joke.

  The salesman led me over to racks of suits. “Forty-two long? Try this one on.” He put a gray jacket with a white stripe on me and it felt like it fit pretty well. “What do you have right now, so we don’t duplicate?”

  I looked at him and shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t own any suits. You’ll have to decide.”

  He managed to mask any thoughts he had about that. “No problem. Step over here and we’ll get you fixed up properly.”

  He moved me in front of the mirror and in that one glance I was fourteen again, in Dan’s closet, trying on one of his suits. He had five: three had labels from a tailor named Tartaglia, one said Corneliani, one said Huntsman. I was wearing the dark blue tailor-made jacket, the sleeves hanging past my hands, and the shoulders down near my biceps, when I noticed that Dan had come in and was watching me. “You have good taste, Rollie boy,” he said. “Had that one made in Beverly Hills. Hell of a tailor and a good friend.” That meant Dan had not paid him, at least not the full amount. “With clothes, your best policy is to have just a few really good pieces rather than a closet full of junk.” He did not have to mention that philosophy allowed faster getaways. I looked around and realized for the first time the closet was not full. It had always seemed like a thick forest to me. The conditions for poking around in Dan’s closet frequently occurred: I was bored and he was out. I searched without pattern or plan for artifacts or secrets. Or money. Anything that would help augment my understanding of him, help me clear the mist. Dan always dressed well. He always looked sharp, so I always made sure I never looked sharp. For Dan, clothes were a uniform: jeans and cowboy boots, khakis and blue blazer, a fancy suit; he was careful to overdress just enough to contrast with and accentuate his relaxing charm.

  Dan took the coat and hung it up. “Bet those boots almost fit you by now.” I looked down; I was wearing shorts and his fancy cowboy boots. They were dark, like chocolate, on the lower part and black on the leg with a design that looked like wings. I admitted they did almost fit. “They’re made from caiman. Know what that is?” I lied and said I did. “It’s a sort of South American crocodile. I had to kill one once.”

  He smiled at the memory, or the smile was a reflex that helped him invent the memory. For a moment, I thought of trying to dart past him, but he filled the doorway, and I knew I wanted to hear the story whether it was true or not. “We had pulled our canoes up on the riverbank, it was an Amazon tributary, and grabbed our packs. There was a village just a quarter mile away through the forest where we planned to camp. A woman in our party lost her balance and fell into the river as she was hoisting her gear. The bottom was muddy. She was flopping around, struggling to get up. We all turned to the guide, he was an Indian, but he just watched her, so we figured it was no big deal. At least I did. Then the woman screamed. The caiman wasn’t five
feet from her. Still the guide didn’t move. If this was a lesson, I didn’t want to learn it. I took my pack off and threw it at the beast. It spun around and bit into the pack. I pulled my knife and moved forward into the water. The tail thrashed and hit me in the leg and that hurt. I almost fell. But I knew I would get only one chance. So I put my knife into its brain.”

  I remember looking down at the boots when he finished the story and starting to take them off. I didn’t want to look at him. He said, “Don’t worry. It’s not that caiman. Y’know, I’ll get you a pair just like them. Take you down and have you fitted.”

  I remember saying, “Will I have to kill a caiman?”

  He said, “When you have to, you’ll know it.”

  The desire to deflect the offer overwhelmed me. I thought I was hiding my expression well enough, but later I wondered. Could anyone ever hide his or her feelings from Dan? Those boots would have been heavy. I wanted them and I didn’t, partly because I knew I would never get them and partly because of the burden they would have carried, the responsibility of ownership, and with it the identity shift that would happen whenever I pulled them on. I owned nothing that could not be ruined and forgotten, lost, tossed away without remorse. Jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, and work boots or basketball shoes constituted my entire range of attire. To walk out in fine boots, even if no one knew me, would have felt like a betrayal of myself. I would have had to walk differently and other changes would follow. I was adventurous, but not in that way. Coveting those boots opened one-way doors that led to places I was not ready to explore.

  Dan did not come through on his promise and that time I was grateful in a way that went beyond the usual vindication of my understanding of the universe. More, I was complicit. He brought it up a few months later, but I made an excuse, knowing that would end the matter forever. Not owning anything that must be cared for or carried or coddled became a guiding principle. Just as Dan used clothes as costumes and cars and accessories to paint his many identities, I built my identity on the absence of those things. Years later, on the riverboat, not long before he died, I asked him if he had ever been to South America. He just looked at me and smiled and said, “Those were beautiful boots, weren’t they?” After I started with SHADE, I went back to the house Dan had been renting in Phoenix. I gave away the suits and the rest of his clothing. The boots weren’t there.