The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  'Why? They're after a serial killer.'

  'And how would you define that term?'

  'This is different. Killing a lot of people is not the same.'

  'Not usually,' I said. 'But nobody says you can only do one and not the other. This guy is their point man. Organizer, inciter, evangelizer—the man who sets situations up, picks patsies, gets the job done. Terrorism without attribution. Murder for the sake of it. Then he stands and watches people sorting the body parts. You telling me that's not the kind of guy who could be into serial killing too? I think this guy is their killer. I think he's the real Upright Man after all.'

  'Ward—you couldn't give the guy a parking ticket on that argument.'

  'Maybe not. But we need help. Nina is the only person I can think of. These fucks killed my parents. I don't care what I have to say to get her on side.'

  Bobby looked at me, and eventually nodded. 'Make the call.'

  Chapter 28

  Some of the time it was like being dead. Some of the time it was like being something else, like a fish or a tree or a cloud or a dog, a damn dog. Dogs are manic and preach in the streets but it's better being a damn dog than dead. Most of the time it was like being nothing at all, just a small bundle of sweet nothing floating down a river under a sky in which no birds sang.

  Sarah was very ill by now. Very occasionally she would remember where and who she was. Her stomach had ceased to cramp. She had stopped registering its sensations. She believed it was still a part of her, and that she also retained her arms and legs. Sometimes there would be a horrible proof of this, an appalling pain that shot up from her toes all the way through her body. It was like a kind of pins and needles, except that the needles and pins were red-hot and a foot long and someone slid them under her skin and then pushed with all their might and left them there. The pain eventually faded, but Sarah was never present for that part. By the time that happened, she would be back on the river, floating downstream again.

  Sometimes people would talk to her as she floated. She heard voices, anyhow. She would hear her friends, her grandmother and sister occasionally, but most often she would hear her mom and dad. Usually they were talking about inconsequential things, as if she was sitting at the table in the living room and doing her homework, and they were just next door and chatting the way you do. You couldn't hear all of what was being said, not usually. It was half-sentences, snatches here and there. 'Charles thinks Jeff's going to fly with this version.' 'Brunch, but this one could be worth it.' 'It's just a third-act thing.' Her mother would say things about her day, where she had been and who she had seen: 'You can do what you like with your face, but you can't hide the back of your hands.' But then her father would say something that had just come into his head, and she would hear all of it, like: 'You know what I'd do if I was famous? Stalk people. I'd find some nobody and just keep popping up in their lives. Who's going to believe them? 'Hey, Mr Policeman—Cameron Diaz keeps bothering me.' Or… 'Look, I've got all these letters from Tom Cruise. No, I have. He's pestering me. That's his handwriting. It really is.' You could send someone completely over the edge. Pretty quickly, too.'

  Sarah didn't know whether she'd ever heard him say these things in the time before her life had become a drifting thing. She didn't think so. She thought it was something just for her, something to keep her company as she floated. He'd always said words for her, the things that came into his head. Mom didn't always realize they were jokes, and didn't often find them funny. Sarah usually did.

  After a while the voices would fade.

  At other times she would hear footsteps, and know that it was them come to save her. She would hear them getting closer and closer, until her mouth began to move, ready to say something when the panel was lifted and her father's face appeared. They would stand right above her, their feet shuffling on the boards that covered her body. But they never found her. The footsteps would fade, and then she would be floating again.

  Occasionally something would rise up in her body, most often after Nokkon had come. Heaves, which cut across her stomach like a knife dipped in ice, until she felt sure she was going to split in two. There was nothing to come up, not even the water, because her body absorbed that as quickly as it could. Her body had got with the program. Sometimes it talked to her now, ticking her off. It was doing its best to hold steady, but it was really very unhappy with the situation. It couldn't be expected to deal with this. Her body had a voice like Gillian Anderson's. It was very reasonable and spoke in long sentences that it must have thought out very clearly ahead of time. But it wasn't happy, and it had stopped believing that things were going to get better. Sarah listened to what it said, and tried to take an interest, but she didn't think there was anything she could do to help.

  Nokkon was her only real friend, and even he didn't come very often any more. Sarah got the feeling he was disappointed in her. He still talked, and gave her water, and told her things, but she sensed it was mainly for his own benefit. He pretended that he was a real person, that when he had been younger he had met people made of hay. That they had found him, or he them. That he had learned from them, and they now learned from him. Nokkon sometimes had those people with him now. That's what he said, anyway, though Sarah couldn't understand why he was bothering to lie. She knew what they were. They were his goblins. They did his bidding and ranged far and wide, watching out for those who were foolish enough to believe themselves lucky, as Sarah once had. They kept tabs on people with microphones and listening bats flying over every house in the world. Some of the goblins were very big, and could stomp hard enough to shake the ground into earthquakes and volcanoes. Others were very, very small and flew through the air and went in through people's pores so they could stir cells around and make black things grow in their lungs and hearts and liver. The big goblins had voices like thunder. The little ones sounded as if they were Welsh. When Sarah coughed she kept her mouth shut so that none of them could fly into her. A few of the goblins were normal sized. They were quite rare. She never saw any of them, but she knew they were there. She banged her head against the wood above her head, trying to make them go away.

  Then everyone would fade out and it would get darker again and she would be floating on and on. At first when she'd floated, it had been like lying with her back on the water, borne along on the surface. It had actually been quite nice. But now she seemed to float lower and lower in the water, as if she was sinking. Her ears were already below the surface, and before long it would be her eyes.

  When the tip of her nose was under, she knew she wouldn't be floating any more.

  Chapter 29

  Zandt stood outside a door in Dale Lawns. When his first ring on the buzzer elicited no response, he pressed it again, leaning on it with all of his weight until he saw a figure through the mottled glass in the door's upper portion, coming toward him out of the white light beyond.

  Gloria Neiden was dressed in top-to-bottom designer, for an evening at home. Yet from her first words it was evident she was drunk. Not benign, cheerful drunk, or even falling-down drunk. Opaquely drunk. Drunk to be alone.

  'Who the hell are you?'

  'My name is John Zandt,' he said. 'We met two years ago.'

  'I'm afraid I don't recall. I certainly don't remember making any arrangements to renew our acquaintance.' This was delivered well, with only one minor slur.

  She started to close the door. Zandt stopped it with his hand.

  'I was one of the policemen who worked the disappearance of Annette Mattison,' he said.

  Mrs Neiden blinked, and it was as if the movement caused a grey chemical to spread down through her face, something that imperfectly embalmed it.

  'Yes,' she said, folding her arms. 'I remember you now. Good work. All nicely tidied away, right?'

  'No. Which is why I'm here now.'

  'My daughter is out with friends. And even if she wasn't, I would insist that she didn't speak to you. It has taken us all a long time to try to come to terms wi
th what happened.'

  'I'm sure,' Zandt said. 'And has it worked?'

  She stared at him, momentarily sobered. 'What do you mean?'

  'What I mean,' he said, 'is that my daughter also disappeared, and coming to terms with it is never going to happen. I want a very short period of your time, during which you might be able to help me find out who destroyed our lives.'

  'Surely you should be talking to the Mattisons, rather than me?'

  'I have one question for you. That's all.'

  She turned away, this time pushing the door more firmly.

  Zandt held it open once again, and spoke without allowing himself to think. 'A question that may stop your husband starting or continuing an affair. That may prevent your daughter from suggesting that it might be better if she doesn't bring her friends home. Which may mean that you're less likely to drive your car into a wall one afternoon because you misjudged a turn or because it just seemed like a good idea.'

  Gloria Neiden stared at him. It took a few seconds for her to find a voice.

  'Fuck off,' she said, low and hard. 'You have no right to speak to me like that. You should have found him. It's not my fault. None of this is my fault.'

  'I know,' Zandt said, watching as her face underwent another horrific change, transformed from animal to frightened girl and back to woman, like a putty mask squeezed by a vicious child. 'Nothing that happened was your fault. I know that. Your family knows that. Everybody knows it except you. You can say it, but you don't really believe it. And that's what will kill you.'

  They stood like that for a while, one each side of the doorway, both pushing. Then neither was pushing, merely standing.

  •••

  He called Nina on the way to Santa Monica. She sounded distracted but agreed to meet him in Bel Air. The address was on file.

  Michael Becker answered the door, and agreed to come with him without explanation. They left Zo standing on the doorstep, holding their younger daughter's hand. She did not create a fuss or demand to be told what was going on. Zandt realized it would have been the same if it had been Zo whom he had asked along, if Michael had been left receding in the rearview mirror of the Beckers' car. The Beckers trusted each other to hold the fort, responsibilities shifting as circumstances dictated. When nothing else makes sense, it is only your relationship to one person, and one person alone, that stands any chance of protecting you against the world. He wished this was a realization he could have had while he was still with Jennifer.

  When the car was moving Zandt asked Michael for the address. Zandt told him to drive there, and refused to answer any of Michael's questions. 'You're going to have to see it' was all he would say. 'You're going to have to be there.'

  Becker's post-Euclidean understanding of the geometry of LA meant it took nearly forty minutes to get back the other side of the city, but then they were climbing up into the hills and passing houses that got bigger and bigger with every turn, until they were so big that you couldn't even see them from the road.

  Finally they came to a cul-de-sac. On either side lay tall security gates. The headlights revealed another car parked discreetly a little way up the road. Nina was leaning against it, her arms firmly folded and one eyebrow raised. Essence of Nina.

  'This is it,' Michael said. 'This is where he lives.' he wasn't stupid. He had begun to make the journey, even if it had yet to reach a fully conscious level. 'What do I say?'

  Zandt got out of the car. Nina was more than ready to ask some questions, but he held up a hand and she kept her peace.

  'Just get us inside,' he told Michael.

  Becker went up to the gatepost and pressed a button. He spoke briefly, and the gates opened within moments.

  Then Zandt was walking fast up the path, with Michael and Nina struggling to keep up.

  When they reached the house the door was open, and a slim man was standing in the light glow from within. The vastness of the estate stretched out on either side. Zandt grabbed Michael's arm, and shoved him in front as they covered the final yards.

  'Hey, Michael,' the man said. 'Who's your friend?'

  Zandt stepped out from behind and grabbed Charles Wang by the throat. With his other hand he hit him twice, short-arm punches to the middle of the face.

  Nina stared. 'John, what the hell are you doing?'

  'Shut the door.' Zandt shoved Wang back into the vast foyer of the house. He punched him again, threw him backward to crash into the white marble of the wall. Picked him up and smacked him into a French-style mirror, shattering the top half.

  A very young man in a white jacket came running out of a doorway under the staircase which swept around the foyer to the upper floor. He found that Zandt had a gun, and that it was pointing at his face.

  'Go back inside, Julio,' Wang said. His voice was steady.

  'Yes, Julio,' Zandt said. 'Go somewhere else and be very quiet. You pick up the phone, then when I'm finished with this fuck I'm going to hunt you down and pull your fucking head off.'

  The boy backed rapidly out of sight.

  Zandt turned the gun back on Wang, who half-lay on the floor by the bottom of the mirror, crumpled as if his back was broken.

  'Aren't you going to run?' Zandt asked. He kicked him hard, in the side. 'Try to get away?'

  'Stop it,' Nina shouted. 'Tell me what's going on.'

  Suddenly Wang was in movement, a fluid push up from the floor. Zandt brought the barrel of the gun hammering down into his face, stopping him dead in his tracks. Wang made a short clicking sound in his throat, and dropped back to the ground.

  Zandt forced his head up. Wang's eyes stared back at him through blood that began to run down from a cut on his forehead. In them Zandt saw nothing but weakness and guile.

  'We fucked up,' Zandt said. 'We looked at level one. We missed level two. We didn't even dream about a level three.'

  Wang smiled up at him as if wondering how much he'd cost to buy. Zandt let go of his throat and slapped his face hard. 'Look at him, he shouted. 'Not me. Look at Michael.'

  Wang seemed for a moment as if he was going to try to run again, but the jab of the gun in his throat convinced him to stay. He slowly turned his eyes toward Michael Becker.

  'We never caught The Upright Man,' Zandt said, 'because we were looking for the person who abducted the girls. The reason why we didn't find the man who abducted the girls was that there was no common link, because they were abducted by different men. Today I looked at some other girls, girls who were similar and disappeared at around the same time. In the end I looked at two in particular. Two girls from New York, who couldn't possibly be connected with The Upright Man, because they went missing on the opposite side of the country at exactly the same time as he was working here.'

  Wang blinked, tried to turn his eyes away from Becker's face. Zandt shoved the gun deeper into his windpipe, and the eyes swivelled back.

  'One girl's father is a development exec for Miramax on the East Coast. The mother of the other girl is halfway up a brokering company who mainly deals with private banks in Switzerland but who also—as I established this very afternoon—has a sideline in using the banks' client lists to find sleeping partners for low-budget film production in Europe. But these are New York girls, right? We're looking for West Coast girls. So I called on Gloria Neiden before I called you. I asked her to list every single person she worked with in the year before her best friend's daughter wound up dead. Every partner, half-partner, agent, exec, financier, loser and wannabe. It took a while, because Mrs Neiden is flaky these days and it's a hard thing to ask someone to remember. But eventually a name came up.'

  Michael Becker stood a couple of yards behind Zandt, staring into the eyes of a man he had sat in sunny offices with, emailed jokes to, hugged after near-successful runs for the television end-zones. The man who had visited his house a hundred times, who had come to family dinners, who had sat in his daughter's bedroom and chatted to her about what a fine time she'd had in England. Who'd known that talking about
England might be a way to hold her attention for long enough for the right moment to arrive to abduct her.

  Wang said nothing.

  'Charles doesn't kill the girls,' Zandt said. 'He doesn't abduct them either. That would be dangerous. Charles doesn't want real danger. He wants power, and kicks, and a feeling that he moves in mysterious ways. All Charles does is pass on information. Charles can find special girls, quality girls. Charles works on commission, I'm sure, but mainly Charles works for fun.'

  'Charles,' Michael said, 'Say something. Tell me this isn't right.'

  'Yes. Tell us how much you get per girl,' Zandt said. 'Explain why, when these people could pluck people off the street, it means so much more to them to reach directly into families. To steal from people who are supposed to be your friends. Explain the thrill of that, because we really fucking want to know.'

  Without warning he stepped back and stomped viciously on Wang's chest. Then he was back in the man's face, shouting: 'Who takes them? Who does the abducting? Where do they go?'

  His eyes still on Michael Becker, Wang licked his lips.

  'You think I know their names?'

  Zandt: 'Describe.'

  'If I don't?'

  Zandt moved the gun an inch and pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into the marble just behind Wang's head and ricocheted viciously across the room. Shards of marble and glass sliced across the man's scalp and face. The gun was moved back to his neck.

  Wang spoke fast. 'There are three I know of. There were four, but one disappeared two years ago. They all look different—what the hell do you want me to say? You think we meet up and have beers?'

  'Describe the one who took Michael's daughter. You must have had contact with him.'

  'It was all done by email and phone.'

  'Bullshit. Emails can be logged and phones can be tapped. But two guys meeting in a hotel bar someplace, in LA, who's going to pay attention to that?'

  Wang licked his lips again. Zandt moved the muzzle of the gun until it was square in the middle of his forehead. Wang watched pressure being applied to the trigger. His lips started to move, but the cop held up his finger.