by Iain Levison
Again, she had that fleeting suspicion this guy was hiding something. It was as if he had been about to say where she was heading back to, and had stopped himself, though she had never mentioned it to him. “No,” Denise said. “I’m here in Tiburn. I think I might have made a mistake.”
“Why’s that?”
“I dunno. I’m wondering why I stayed.” She was surprised at herself for honestly divulging her sudden frustration to a stranger. “Should have gone back with my partner.”
“Well, I have a proposition for you,” Elias said. “I have a student who is very interested in joining the FBI, and I was hoping you could meet with us. Give her some advice, anecdotes, whatever. She’d find your input invaluable.” There was a pause while Denise considered this, and Elias sweetened the pot with, “I’ll buy you dinner.”
“OK,” said Denise, after a pause. What the hell? Her dance card wasn’t exactly full, and a free dinner would be nice now that she had developed buyer’s remorse over dropping two hundred on a rental car and a motel room. “Italian?”
“We can do Italian, but I know a great seafood place.”
“Seafood’s great, too.”
Denise took down directions and they agreed on seven-thirty. She hung up and tossed the phone down on the bed. That was something to do, anyway. Might be interesting. How boring could a history professor be? Oh wait, that’s right. But at least she’d get to talk to a guy who wasn’t in the F B fucking I. And meet a hopeful, optimistic student who she imagined would be a mirror image of herself, a dozen years ago.
It took Denise about a third of a second to realize that Jenny Hingston was not a hopeful young version of herself a dozen years ago, and that something else entirely was going on here. Jenny Hingston might one day be a rich man’s wife, or maybe, if she opted to support herself, a socialite or a porn star, but one thing she was never going to be was an FBI agent. Not with a six-hundred-dollar Coach handbag and highlights that must have been at least half that.
That left the probability that Denise had been asked here not so Elias could try to screw her, as she had imagined, but as a device to impress one of his students, whom he clearly was trying to screw. Denise drew this impression from the body language between Jenny and Elias in the instant before they realized she was approaching them, and her brain processed it in the exact same third of a second when it was noticing that Jenny Hingston was a rich, attractive bubblehead.
“Hi,” Denise said, beaming warmly, and they both turned and smiled at her, Elias awkwardly, as introductions were made. Jenny Hingston had excellent social skills and spoke in a low and breathy voice as she introduced herself. Too used to male attention, too poised for twenty-one or twenty-two. Denise wondered what she was getting out of this evening. An A, probably.
“We’re waiting for a table,” said Elias. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Well, fuck it. Some free vodka tonics might soften the blow. She was about to ask Elias for one when she realized, hey, if I’m getting dragged out here and made to play a part in their play for the evening about a young girl who wanted to be in the FBI, I’ll get the good stuff. “Ketel One and Tonic,” she said.
She remembered that that was how last night had started, with her having just one or two drinks at a bar, ending with her smoking pot in a truck with some plasterers while she regaled them with tales of a profession she had never even thought of entering. She wanted to cover her face at the memory, but she just smiled as she accepted the drink from Elias.
“Thank you, Professor White.”
“Elias, please.”
He paid for the drink with a hundred, and seemed to want her to notice him doing it. Funny, he didn’t seem the flashy type. It was a weird gesture. Maybe he was tired of the myth that all professors were broke, and was trying to prove otherwise.
Denise turned to Jenny and said pleasantly, “So, I hear you’re interested in a career in law enforcement.”
“Yuh,” said Jenny, staring blankly across the top of her drink, the sip straw still in her mouth.
Yuh. Denise contrasted that response with what she imagined her own would have been, twelve years ago. She would have loved to have gotten the insight and advice of a female field agent of twelve years’ standing, would probably have prepared a list of questions to ask. What are the key factors in the application process? How easy is it to transfer departments? And most important of all, how do they treat women? Is it really as progressive a work environment as they claim?
Yuh.
“I think it’s cool,” Jenny said, removing her face from the sip straw for a second, “that you’re an FBI agent. I think that’s so cool.”
“Thanks,” said Denise sweetly.
“Do you like, get to use your gun a lot? Do you ever shoot people?”
“Sure, I shoot people all the time. I just shot two people on the way over here.”
Elias laughed extra hard to make sure Jenny understood it was a joke, and Jenny half-laughed with him, making the whole scene so strained that Denise decided to just be nice. “Now might not be a great time to join the FBI,” she told Jenny.
“Why not?”
“It’s very much a male-dominated field right now,” Denise said.
Jenny shrugged. “I don’t mind working with guys.”
OK, this was going to be a long evening. The history professor had better offer up some interesting conversation quick, or she was going to bolt after the appetizer, remembering the . . . what? What excuse could she use when she was out of town? She had to go visit the police station to make sure they got flyers of Dixon. That would be a good one. To prepare them for it, Denise asked, “Where’s the local police station from here?”
Elias gave her cursory directions, then asked why she needed them.
“I have to swing by there later to make sure they got flyers of the guy we’re looking for.”
“Flyers?” Elias seemed suddenly very interested in her job. It was not an uncommon reaction from men, but Elias’s interest was disturbingly detailed. “Where will they hang flyers?”
“Wherever people might see them. The Post Office, for instance. Municipal offices, state or federal buildings. The cable company might run some info about him, depending on what kind of local access you have. We usually feed a picture to the local press, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea in this town.”
“Why not?” asked Elias.
“Small-town people are easy to scare. This guy’s violent, a long history of crimes with a weapon. So we’d need more solid evidence that he was actually in town.”
“So you’re not even sure he’s in town?”
“No we’re not.” Denise looked at him with her most serious FBI face and said, “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”
Elias gasped, choking on his drink. “I don’t know a thing,” he protested, his voice high-pitched with the screech of innocence, the color draining from his face. By the time he realized that Denise had been joking he had already completely lost his composure, and Denise found it odd he was so jumpy. Perhaps the social stress of trying to screw one of his students was wearing on him.
“No, you got me,” Elias said, having composed himself. “This guy’s living in my basement.”
“Ah-hah,” Denise said victoriously, glad to have discussion of her work behind her. “Another mystery solved.”
“You’re like a modern-day hero,” said Jenny Hingston, suddenly aware of being left out of the conversation. “I mean, like with September Eleventh and stuff.”
September Eleventh and Stuff. Maybe that was the title of the Official Airhead’s Guide to Terrorism. “No,” Denise protested, her voice laced with the undetectable irony she had perfected. “The real modern-day heroes are people like your professor here.”
Elias blushed, mistaking, as she intended, her insipid flattery for genuine praise. Oh, men were so dumb. But Jenny picked up on it and immediately began to regard Denise as a possible hostile presence in her midst.
Their table was called, and as they walked over to it, Denise was aware of Jenny giving her a complete physical appraisal, with an obviously critical eye meant to inspire insecurity. She’s checking out my ass, Denise thought. This girl was good. She hadn’t risen to the top of her sorority food chain by being a sweet airhead. Denise was surprised to notice that even from this dumb little bitch, it did inspire insecurity. But only for a second.
Oooh, this dinner might be fun after all.
As he handed the menu back to the waiter, Elias suddenly realized that he was expected to cover the entire bill. He couldn’t very well expect Jenny to fork over any money, because she was his student, and you couldn’t ask your students to chip in, it just wasn’t cool. And he had asked Denise to come as a favor to him, so unless she pulled out an FBI expense card of some kind he was on the hook for the whole thing. He started the calculations in his head. Tilapia and a brie appetizer for Denise, a salmon salad for Jenny, and a roast duck for him, which he had ordered because it was the cheapest thing he could find on the menu that didn’t sound cheap. The pulled pork entrée was also seventeen dollars, but he would be damned if he was paying that for something that sounded like it should be served at a picnic.
Elias knew he had Dixon’s two hundred dollars, but Dixon had only given him eighty of it, as he wanted the rest for change. With the Tilapia, brie appetizer, salmon salad and duck, that was his eighty right there, if you included the drinks at the bar. Plus tip, plus more drinks they were going to have at the table . . .
“What are you thinking about? You looked stressed,” said Denise, almost affectionately. She had seemed caustic and combative when she first walked in, with an unnerving habit of saying ambiguously hostile things with a sweet smile. But damn, Elias had to admit she looked good. Where Jenny was slim and perfectly turned out, her nails and hair groomed, her perfume subtle yet noticeable, Denise was curvy and simplified. A nice, professional beige skirt, showing a pair of what Elias thought were perfect legs, and a red shirt which hinted of ample breasts without resorting to showing cleavage, as Jenny had done.
But as soon as they had sat down to eat, the combativeness had disappeared. Maybe FBI agents really loved food, or maybe there had been some subtle shift in the dynamics of the relationships between the three of them. Elias sensed he had somehow become the focus of the two women, and they were about to have a contest with their flirting skills, which had been his plan all along.
“Now you’ve got a shit-eating grin,” said Denise. “You’re clearly somewhere else.”
Elias snapped back into the moment. “So tell me about banks,” he said. “How does the money go from the mint to the bank?”
“What?”
“I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently, and he was suggesting that when mints print money, there is some kind of nefarious activity that goes on. How does the money get from the mint to the bank?”
“In an armored car, probably,” ventured Denise.
“Does the bank pay the government for the money? And if so, why is the government in debt to the banks?”
Denise giggled. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the Chairman of the Federal Reserve? I’m an FBI field agent.”
Elias nodded, took out Dixon’s hundred and handed it to Denise. “What does this letter F here mean?”
“Well that I can tell you . . . It’s a series indicator. But I don’t think you’ll get to the bottom of any conspiracy theories by knowing that,” she said. She handed the bill back to Elias. “You . . . or should I say your friend . . . doesn’t trust the government, does he?”
“I’m pretty certain my friend doesn’t,” said Elias. “I don’t have an opinion about it one way or the other.” They were looking at each other with an intensity that Elias was thoroughly enjoying, and Jenny, who suddenly realized she was going to be excluded from this conversation, announced she was going to the restroom.
“Are you sleeping with her?” Denise asked the second Jenny was out of earshot.
“No,” said Elias. “Why do you ask?”
The brie appetizer arrived and Denise moved most of Jenny’s accoutrements to the edge of the table so she and Elias had room to share it. “Why do I ask? Oh, please.”
“What does ‘oh please’ mean?”
“She’s your student,” Denise said.
“And?”
Denise rolled her eyes, and they both dipped into the warm brie.
“So you’re saying it would be unethical?” Elias asked.
“Do I really need to explain that?”
“No. You need to explain why. You know what most ethics are? They’re an excuse for people to get up on their high horse and start crapping on each other. Most ethical restrictions on our behavior have no bearing on anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take priests for instance. You know why it’s considered unethical for priests to have sex?”
“Because chastity brings them closer to God.”
Elias shook his head victoriously, getting exactly the answer he had hoped for, as he prepared to impart the one fact he still remembered from a course about the church in the Middle Ages. “Nope. It’s because the church used to give the priests land, and if the priests didn’t have heirs, the land would go back to the church when the priest died. You think all these priests with blue balls are any closer to God? No, they’re sitting around thinking about getting laid all day, because that’s what humans do. And they’re getting those blue balls so the Pope can stay rich.”
Denise shook her head in wonderment, smiling in a way which Elias didn’t how to interpret: as enjoyment of the conversation or a mask for shock. He opted for the former. “How does that excuse you for sleeping with your students?”
“I’m not sleeping with any of my students, but what if I were? You think it would inhibit their learning? Look at her. You think she’s going to be incorporating the lessons of Hindenburg’s weak leadership into her life any time soon? You think she’s intrigued by Hitler’s rise to power, how a man who never got more than a third of Germany’s vote became the supreme ruler of a democracy? No, of course not. She’s going back to Concord to run her dad’s car dealership, with a degree that’s nothing more than window dressing. So why shouldn’t I just fuck her brains out, because she’s more likely to remember that three years from now than anything I tell her about the Reichstag fire.”
Elias was surprised at his rant; not by the content, which was something he had always strongly felt, but by how much he sounded like Dixon. Fuck her brains out. Jesus, the guy was rubbing off on him. And he had been surprised by what a rush he had felt when he had handed Dixon’s hundred dollar bill to Denise. Here you go, here’s the entire case right in your hand. He had wanted to burst out laughing when she handed it back without really looking at it.
Denise now actually was laughing, something that hadn’t seemed possible when they had first met. “You’re awful,” Denise said, but in a way that indicated she also found the awfulness intriguing. “If you know she’s just going to go back to Concord to run her dad’s car dealership, why did you want her to talk to me about being in the FBI?”
Elias realized it was time to make a decision here, to commit. The way the evening was developing, it looked like Denise was going to be the one. Maybe Jenny some other time. “It was an excuse to see you again,” he said. “When you came into my office, I thought you were stunning. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Dixon heard the car pull into the driveway as he lay on his makeshift cot in the pitch-black basement. All evening he had been listening to the sounds of the country, the occasional car going past, the wind rustling through the trees. It was a beautiful change from prison, where there was always a fluorescent light on and every sound echoed throughout the monstrous steel cave. There had always been the voices of other men, some angry, some conversational, but constant, until even beatings and screaming became white sound, a noise to drift off to
sleep by. But here there was silence and wind and bird noises and the blackness of the basement, and even in the blackness Dixon knew where his beers were. He liked lying in the complete blackness, his sense of vision completely neutralized, because it made him think that death might not be that bad.
He heard Elias’s car door open, then the passenger door opened and immediately he heard a woman’s voice. The voice was clear and self-assured, not the voice of a young girl. Elias must have picked on someone his own age this time.
“I like your garden,” the woman said, and Dixon liked the sound of her, felt a rush of envy that he would never meet her. He liked her because Elias’s front garden was an open-air botanical mortuary. Elias muttered something about not having green fingers. Then Dixon heard a key in the lock.
They came inside, then there was silence, and Dixon thought they might be caught in some kind of passionate embrace. Then he heard footsteps as they came into the kitchen, directly above him.
“I’ve got wine and tequila,” he heard Elias say, and he noticed Elias sounded excited, a little breathless, but controlling it. The tone of his voice reminded Dixon of a predatory cat eyeing some prey species on the African plains, like he had seen in nature documentaries in prison. The bastard had tequila? Where was it hidden?
“How about a shot of tequila, then a glass of wine,” said the woman. She was in the living room now, and Dixon could hear her walking around thoughtfully. She must be looking at the pictures on the wall, noticing small things about the house to give her clues about the man. Women were always looking for clues. So was Dixon. It was a necessity for the hunted. This woman knew the recipe for a total loss of control, but she didn’t have the rough voice or demeanor of an experienced drinker. Dixon figured she wanted to get drunk tonight, then fuck Elias and forget about him.
He heard a door slide open, and he knew it was the sliding cupboard over the washing machine. The bastard hid his tequila behind the detergent. Hid it from who? Himself? It must have been there for a while, since before Dixon showed up. There was the sound of fumbling for glasses, and the opening and closing of doors. Then the distinct sound of pouring, and Elias went into the living room, where the voices were giggly and more muffled.
