Blackbird

by Michael Fiegel

  Joe telling me all this is not surprising. It’s nothing to do with disloyalty and everything to do with apathy. He knows he’s going to die, so he may as well rid himself of the baggage. This is why we work in isolated cells; it minimizes what you know, what you can damage on the way out. Even the most talkative bird can only ever crack one shell. Which reminds me …

  “Why are you here, anyway?” I ask.

  “I was called, I came,” says Joe. “It’s called having friends, not that you’d know anything about that. We met in Iraq, when I got recruited.”

  “Bullshit. Nick’s never served a day in his life.”

  “I never said he was military.”

  I press my hand against my temple to try and rub away my growing headache. This is getting me nowhere. But maybe that’s where I have always been headed.

  “You never thought to ask why Nick was doing this?” I ask.

  “Fuck no,” replies Joe. “I got paid. You’ll get paid, unless you fuck yourself here. It’s just business, Ed. Don’t treat it as something personal.”

  “How the fuck is this not personal?”

  He stares me in the eye. I really hope Josh isn’t sneaking up behind me right now because I’ll be damned if I break eye contact first.

  “It is personal for you,” he says. “The point is it shouldn’t be. And you know that. You fucked this up for yourself. I don’t play bring-your-daughter-to-work-day like you do.”

  “No, you brought someone else’s d—” Someone else’s what?

  Someone else’s someone.

  “I did you a favor,” he continues. “Both of you. I got Nick someone for his job, and I got rid of a problem you wouldn’t admit you had. Two birds, one stone.”

  “You missed a bird,” I reply coldly.

  “Know the difference between us?” he asks. “I have something you don’t. Ambition.”

  “Yeah? Well, I have something you don’t.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A gun.”

  After I give the bullet in Joe’s head a partner, I consider doing Josh, too but I need him to drive, and I need him to help me put the body in the trunk, and frankly I need the company. My hands are shaking, and I’m not sure it is adrenaline.

  • • •

  The Sunset District is not far on paper, but everywhere takes an hour in this city. By the time we arrive, I am bouncing off the car door, but Josh takes his time and parks around the corner from the place. I am not thinking clearly and would not have done this myself.

  Once we’re at the address though, and Josh’s sanity is no longer holding me back, I lunge through the unlocked front door, not caring who might see us. No time to think. Thinking would make me question what I was doing. This is all about momentum right now. If you are moving, you know where you are going, and if you know where you are going then you are at least making progress. Of a sort.

  Inside, it is clear right away that whatever is going to happen has already happened. There are two bodies. One more than I expected. And I am far too late, I think, because I did not stop this. I do not want to think about it, but it plays out in my head. Inexorable.

  • • •

  There are children around when she gets to the door, about her age, and this makes her nervous. They are watching her from across the street. Staring. It is cool and cloudy out, but she is sweating. This uniform itches. Something is not right. But she has no idea about cookie-selling season. She does not know that she needs to run.

  Instead, she knocks and waits. A few seconds later, a man answers the door. His beard reminds her of Josh, for some reason. His feet are bare.

  “Yeah?” he asks.

  “Hi,” she says. “I’m selling cookies—”

  “Sure,” he says. “Come on in.”

  She hesitates. It was not supposed to be this easy, especially since normally a girl like her wouldn’t go inside, wouldn’t be alone. But he is already turning, leaving her to come in of her own accord, or not. Run, she thinks. But she has a job to do. She does not want to screw it up.

  “No shoes in the house, please,” he says, tapping a pair of boots with his toe. There are multiple pairs of shoes there. It seems ordinary enough so she heads inside, kicking her own shoes off next to the pile.

  “Head on into the kitchen,” says the man, gesturing with his thumb. “I’ll get my wallet.”

  “Can I use your bathroom?” she asks. One of the excuses she had planned to use, even though it is no longer needed. She bounces a bit to really sell it.

  “End of the hall,” he says.

  “Thanks,” she says, skidding in stocking feet as she rushes to the last door and shuts it behind her. And realizes as she does that it was not a lie; she really does have to go. While she’s in the bathroom, she looks for somewhere to stash the box, maybe on top of the mirror or under the sink, but realizes how obvious a green box would be in there. It will have to be in the kitchen.

  Still, something is wrong, so she sneaks out of the bathroom without flushing, trying not to make noise. She can hear the man muttering somewhere. She creeps closer, and she is nearly to the doorway when she hears something he says, on the phone with Nick maybe, or to someone else in the room. Something about a girl selling cookies. About keeping her there. Or maybe she hears the bird clock over the fireplace chirp the hour. And she realizes exactly what kind of place she is in. What kind of people these are.

  Whatever it is, it is there that she sets the box of cookies on the floor—the box still lying there now—and there that I imagine she pulls the 29 out of her waistband, thumbing the safety off. Glad she listened to me about the gun, maybe hoping she can get out without having to use it. But as she steps past the living room she peers inside and sees that the man is not alone. She hesitates, but her delay is countered somewhat by the fact that they are not expecting to see a mint-flavored girl holding a gun, and so they hesitate as well. She fires. Wildly, perhaps, but accurately enough. She gets the first one in the chest, a certain kill, and the second one in the neck, so he dies slower. And then …

  • • •

  And then, I have no idea. Perhaps it went nothing like that. Certainly they knew right away it was no longer cookie-selling season. Probably Nick told them to watch for her. I do not know. This is a game of seconds, and I am late. Mistakes. Too many mistakes. All I know for sure is there are two dead bodies here, and neither of them is hers, and she is gone. And I might think she got away clean, might, except her shoes are still here, right where she kicked them off beside the door, maybe twenty feet from the useless green box of cookies.

  I call Nick’s number. The only one I know. No answer. No surprise.

  Of course there is no identification on the bodies, no evidence in the house, nothing to indicate anything. In the whole of the place there is no single clue to their identity. Save, of course, the bird clock over the fireplace. A bullet has smashed it, broken it forever, frozen it on 9:01 AM forever. Just after the Red-Winged Blackbird sang its hourly song. It is ridiculous, a movie thing, some Hollywood nonsense contrivance. And yet there it is, undeniable.

  “Now we know when it happened,” says Josh, needlessly.

  And we know who was involved. The clock could be a coincidence, but I refuse to believe that. It cannot be, not with everything else. This house belonged to a cell, and Nick had Xtian go there under false pretenses. The clock is not random; it is a shared context to hide conversations, everywhere we might need to discuss business.

  We?

  No. Them. It always was them, and always will be. Especially after this.

  Two minutes later we are on the road. Ten more and we hit 280, and then time becomes meaningless and we fly past SFO and are halfway to SJC and Josh asks me where we go now, and I tell him to just drive, as I try again and again to call Nick. Pointlessly. Whoever, wherever, they are hours ahead of us. Eventually light goes dark, and we find ourselves no closer to nowhere. And nowhere is safe, now. Besides, we need to get rid of erstwhile Joe, in
the trunk with his collection of artillery. Getting pulled over right now would be ludicrously entertaining.

  “Where should I go? Ed?”

  I have no answer. I know nothing. I am useless. Impotent.

  “Edward?”

  “Why are you here?” I snap. I have to attack something. Have to hurt something else. “I never did anything for you. I barely know you. Why are you still here?”

  He is quiet for a moment, fingers tapping idly on the steering wheel in time to the dotted white lines flying past.

  “I believe in right and wrong,” he says at last. It sounds memorized, like a story he has been reading himself for a while now. “And I believe at the end of the day what we do is right. I know you don’t give a shit, but I do, and I believe that the ends justify our means. But this shit? I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know what fucked up looks like, and this is fucked up. And it’s wrong. So that’s why. Because I won’t be part of anything wrong.”

  And there is a pause, and then, partly for my benefit, but mostly for his own, he adds:

  “Not again.”

  I turn away, watch the mile markers fly past, connecting the dots, past to future. And it is not true that I know nothing. I know Nick is involved, and he is meddling with things he should not. Even with what little I know this is bigger than I imagined. For all I know it involves the entire organization, top to bottom. Pieces are shifting on the board, and pawns are going to fall before this is through. And I can come to only one inevitable conclusion: Xtian is dead.

  And where does that leave me? Nowhere. And with what? Nothing, and less.

  Nothing but a body in the trunk, and a broken clock on the back seat, and—in my lap—an empty pair of shoes that smell of a girl I once knew.

  Once upon a time.

  Ever After

  05/07/2014

  These men, Xtian,” I told her more than once. “You have no idea what they are capable of.”

  The last time, she looked at me and smiled. “I think I do,” she said. And I guess she did, eventually. Three days ago. If she had not quite figured it out before then, she knew before the end exactly how terrible people can be. People like me.

  I am not the best at what I do, but neither am I the worst of what we are. Those I work with stand for nothing and will stand for almost anything—no morals, no compunctions, no ideologies in the way. Murderers, arsonists, tax evaders, rapists, serial killers, child molesters, car bombers, suicidal antisocial bastards. We will do anything we are paid to do, whether that involves killing or arson or mere terror, whether we target one man or twenty, or twenty thousand. Whatever it takes, and for whatever reason, as long as the money is good, and sometimes even when it is not. This is why they use us. We can do anything that needs doing, and we will. And when they are done with us, we are easily disposable. Lunatics and lone wolves. Conspiracy theorists and psychopaths.

  According to some calculations, one percent of everyone is what might be considered a psychopath. Seventy million people, worldwide. Lawyers, politicians, serial killers. These are the people I introduced her to. Let her work with. Yes, let. I was complicit. I let her. I could have refused, could have taken her away, could have … what? Left it all behind? For what?

  For a girl?

  I could not have done that, walked away to be something I am not. But there are things I could have done. Warned her sooner. Refused to let her go alone. Paid more attention to what was going on. There were signs I missed, or ignored. Signs I am seeing now, as I sit here and run it all through my head again, trying to decide what to do with myself now. Where I might go. Who I might go with. These were easy questions when Xtian was around. I got used to having someone around. Now there is no one, and I need to get used to being alone again.

  I hope she is dead. It feels odd to write that, but I do. I think it is probably better if she is. Because if she is not dead, I can imagine what is going to happen to her. All too vividly. Things that have happened to me, in the past. And worse. Which is why when we arrived in California, the first thing I did was show her how to kill herself.

  Priorities.

  • • •

  I remember it like it was two days ago. She was wearing a white shirt bought at the thrift store, well-stretched out at the sleeves and waist, hanging loose over dark blue jeans and all the way down to her thumb pads, tips of her fingers visible, unbroken, unpolished nails, which she tapped on the desk specifically to annoy me.

  “Why do I need to know how to kill myself?” she asked.

  “In case something bad happens,” I said. “In case I get caught. Or you get caught.”

  “They won’t catch us though,” she said. “They only get the bad guys.”

  “What are we then?”

  “Worse guys.”

  We ran down the list together. Guns, of course, came up. Quick and painless if done right, neither if you flinch. Hanging, short and long nooses, benefits of each. Carbon monoxide or pure nitrogen, if you can get it, but it is fairly complicated. Slit wrists are simpler—“down the river, not across the stream” and warm water. Messy and slow, but certain if you do it right.

  “I saw this girl at the mall who cut herself on her thighs,” she said.

  “That is not suicide,” I replied. “That is just California.”

  And I remember it like it was two hours ago. Her bell-bottom jeans had torn embroidery around the hems and underneath them she was barefoot inside sensible brown shoes with heavy black buckles, and she kicked me and smiled.

  What she liked best were the poisons, of course, perhaps because it was so like cooking, creation and destruction all at once, a little Hindu goddess. Aspirin, iron supplements—plenty of things to overdose on if you want to suffer on the way out. If not, insulin, or codeine, or hydrocodone, but you need a lot. All of these benefitting from a vodka chaser.

  “But you are not old enough to drink,” I said.

  And I remember it like it was two minutes ago. She raised her hand and her sleeve slid back and she showed me her middle finger, delicate and perfect, her first knuckle bearing some silly piece of costume jewelry from a gumball machine, yellow plastic the color of her hair, the color of chlorine. How she always smelled to me.

  Household chemicals. Bleach and vinegar for chlorine gas, bleach and ammonia for hydrazine. Painful. Malathion, warfarin, painful and bloody. Antifreeze and OJ. Or one of nature’s own concoctions: digitalis, white oleander, hemlock, belladonna, nightshade, mushrooms, ricin. So many ways the world is trying to kill off humanity. Possibly it knows something.

  “But how would you do it?” she asked.

  Her tablet buzzed, and she turned to fetch it, leaning over the chair, and the three inches that separated her top from her bottom turned into five, and at the small of her back was a soft down, like a baby bird. She had been seeming older every day, but suddenly she was just a little girl again.

  “Gun to the head,” I said. I always have one around even if I opt not to carry it everywhere. “If not that, then cyanide. Pricey, but certain and quick if you’re in kind of a hurry. I keep some of that around too.”

  “And if you weren’t in a rush?” she asked.

  “Distilled nicotine,” I said. “Takes a while to make, but four or five drops means a permanent coma in about thirty seconds. Lovely stuff. By the way, never smoke. It is very bad for you.”

  “Everything is bad for me,” she pouted. “Even you.”

  “Especially me,” I said.

  • • •

  I realize my right hand is trembling, but this is not a surprise as it has been clenched around a gun as I have stared at this screen, pecking out words with one finger, remembering, trying not to remember, thinking about going back to read what I have written of her, to help bring part of her back, here and now. But no. That would be a betrayal, and I will not betray history, not for this.

  Strange, that thinking about her dead makes me think about all those ways to do herself in, if such an occasion as t
his should arise. Stranger still, that thinking on this should result in me holding a gun to my head. Not the first time, of course. During my lengthy absence from work, there were several nights I did much the same. But those times, it was purely selfish. A theoretical escape from a pointless existence. This is different.

  I am just not sure why.

  I’m not sorry. I know that. And I have not cried. I can, when it is convenient. I am physically capable. I can pretend to care but I cannot really care. At least not usually. Knowing that makes me want to cry sometimes, but that is nothing but a vicious cycle of rinse and repeat. An Ouroboros of self-loathing and depression that takes me back to a place I never thought I would be again, a place I have not been in almost six years. Not since I found a little egg in a store and took her back to my nest to … to what? Hatch? Or scramble?

  And there it is again. I feel something deep inside, hatching, unfolding black wings. Small, but present. Something has changed. I am not sure what it is, but it hurts. Is it guilt? Responsibility? Regret? Is that the same as sorry?

  And the phone rings, is ringing, has been ringing, I realize, for long minutes now, four rings and then silence and then four more, over and over. I listen to it for a while, a song in four/four time, a lullaby, and for a moment I cannot decide: gun, or phone?

  There is ample time for both, I think.

  Left first.

  “Ed? It’s Josh. I found them.”

  A cascade of thoughts run through my head like a slot machine. They line up cherries.

  “Ed?”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  And he does. Josh tells me where, and who, and how. He leaves when up to me.

  I tell him I will call him back. Then I hang up.

  My hand is no longer trembling as I put my handgun down, and push back my chair, and stand, and begin to gather things. Things for killing. Because when is soon. Only because it cannot be right now.

  I cannot bring you back, Xtian. But I can send some people with you. They are not the best company, but they will have to do. Compensation.