by Paul Watkins
The man’s steps faltered, as if confused by what he had heard.
Dodge ran faster, gaining on him.
Then the figure in black stopped suddenly, hunched down as if prepared to take the impact of Dodge slamming into him.
Dodge ran faster, holding his arms up, ready to bring the man down.
Then the man turned and suddenly Dodge was staring at the squared-off barrel of a Glock pistol. He threw his arms up and tried to stop, but his momentum kept him going. Dodge tipped over and fell hard against the ground. He skidded on until he came to within a few feet of the man.
The figure stood his ground, keeping the gun level with Dodge’s head.
Now the two of them were motionless except for their heaving chests. The beam of the flashlight in Dodge’s hand shuddered up into the trees.
“I’m a police officer.” Dodge choked back spit.
The words brought no movement from the man in black. The barrel of the gun stayed pointed at Dodge’s face. His breathing changed pitch. He opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he stepped forward, gun held out.
Dodge closed his eyes tight and gritted his teeth.
The man in black kicked the flashlight from Dodge’s right hand. It flew against a tree and smashed and went out. Then the man was running again, footsteps quickly fading.
Dodge did not try to follow. He clenched and unclenched his right hand to see if any bones were broken. He felt as if a couple of his fingernails might have been torn off. Blood trickled onto the heel of his palm, then down his wrist and into his sleeve. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes and let the rain touch his face.
“Marcus!” Coltrane called from somewhere down the slope. The beam of his flashlight stabbed holes in the dark. “Marcus!” He scrambled hand over foot to the place where Dodge lay. “Oh, Christ,” Coltrane whispered, and dropped to his knees in front of Dodge. He tucked the flashlight under his arm so he could use his hands and still see. His hands hovered over Dodge, not daring to touch. “Oh, God, what did he do to you, Marcus?”
“I lost him.” Dodge breathed out in a sigh.
“What happened to you? I couldn’t keep up.” Coltrane held his hands against his chest and moaned, rocking back and forth. “Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have gone into the woods. I knew it the first time! This is all my fault.”
Dodge cupped his right hand in his left and felt the pain in his bruised fingers. “I’m all right.”
“No, you aren’t. Oh, Jesus.” Coltrane was crying. “Oh, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to get up and walk out of here, Victor.” Dodge clambered to his feet and now stood looking down at Coltrane.
“You’re standing!” Coltrane sat on the ground, looking up in awe at Dodge.
“Of course I’m standing.”
“So you’re all right?”
“I told you I was.” Dodge held out his good hand and helped Coltrane to his feet. “He had a gun. He aimed it right at my head.” Dodge’s back hurt him where he had fallen.
“I thought you were dead!” Coltrane smeared tears and rain and burnt cork across his face with his fingers. “I’m a lousy friend to you. I can’t even watch your back. Oh, I’m no fucking good!”
“What are you talking about?” Dodge scratched at his neck.
Coltrane said a few more times that he was no good, thinking of the silence he had kept and how he’d be paying for it the rest of his life unless he set things straight somehow.
Dodge stood there patiently, his nose plugged up with blood, waiting for Coltrane to finish cussing himself. When Coltrane was finished, they started walking down the slope. Dodge’s ring finger and index finger were throbbing. Pain gnawed into the place where his little fingernail had been. “I wonder who he is,” Dodge said. “I wanted to talk to him.”
“And he wanted to shoot you.” Coltrane gave him a tap on the arm with the flashlight.
The light went out.
Coltrane shook the flashlight and the batteries rattled inside. “Oh, shit.” He aimed the thing at his face and switched it on and off and there was still no light, so he stuffed it in the pocket of his raincoat.
It was pitch-black. Rain pattered the leaves. The two men groped their way from tree to tree until they hit the tracks. Then they started walking toward town. The sun was coming up as they moved across the iron bridge. The sky was bands of purple, pink and blue. They started thinking about food. The Four Seasons would be open by now.
Coltrane was already scanning the menu in his head. “I wish I knew what it is about the Algonquin that’s making him do all this. I mean, why wouldn’t he pick some huge stand of redwoods out in the Pacific Northwest?”
“Because it’s the Algonquin.” For Dodge, nothing more needed to be said. It was all clear to him, and had been for a while.
Coltrane was silent. He threw his busted flashlight off the bridge. It plopped into the black river water.
They walked straight to Mackenzie’s house and woke him up. “Dressed in black,” Coltrane said, “and carrying a forty-five as well. It could have been a woman. I mean, it looked like the person had a chest, or something tucked under there.”
Mackenzie stood in his doorway. He wore a gray dressing gown which had twisted black and yellow braid around its edges. The dressing gown was falling apart. Its lining hung down in tatters around Mackenzie’s knees. “Is this true?” he barked at Dodge, as if he could not take Coltrane’s word on anything.
“All of it,” said Dodge. He kept his right hand in his pocket. Blood had gathered black and painful under the nails. “What surprised me is that there was only one person. If there were more, they would have been working together and we would have seen them.”
It’s Madeleine, thought Mackenzie. She’s the kind who’d have a gun tucked away someplace, and who’d be in good enough shape to outrun Dodge and Coltrane. He wished he had been there, to use all the strength he had left in the world and catch her and sink his hands, purple-bruising, into her neck. He almost said her name out loud, it seemed so clear to him. But he kept silent. He no longer wanted Dodge to catch Madeleine. That job was Shelby’s now, and Shelby would get the job done.
Shelby ran halfway up Seneca Mountain before he stopped to see if he was being followed. Twice he had run smack into trees and now one of his teeth was chipped. He could feel it, ragged and stabbing pain up through his jaw. He estimated the cost of repair and deducted it from the money he’d be getting for this job. Rage skulked wild-eyed and rabid in the corners of his mind.
He had been drawn from his hiding place by the sound of the train, wanting to stand as close to the tracks as he dared and feel the force of the train hurtling by. And then those two men had appeared, and he had almost laughed out loud, it seemed like such bad luck. Shelby promised himself no more mistakes.
He knew he could have outrun that policeman much more easily if he had not been carrying so much gear. Strapped to his chest was a starlight scope, for viewing infrared. It could be used as a sniper scope, but he had brought it along to observe any movement along the track. The scope weighed almost twenty pounds. It had cost him over a thousand dollars and he could not afford to ditch it.
He did not know how close he had come to shooting the policeman. Probably closer than the policeman would ever want to know. He would have to be much more careful now, because these two men, possibly others as well, were searching for the same people he was. Shelby knew he had to get there first. Mr. Ungaro had been very clear on that. The only thing that had not been clear was exactly what should be done with the tree spikers when Shelby found them. Shelby knew from experience that Ungaro’s lack of clarity meant he didn’t care if these people ended up dead.
Now, with the rising sun, and the rain only leftover drops finding their way down from leaf to leaf to the ground, Shelby walked back toward town. He did not stick to the path, but kept inside the woods. Bands of sunlight burned and faded in the clearings, as clouds began to scatter overhead. Just as he rea
ched the Narrow River bridge, he heard a noise, the awkward thrash of footsteps in the bushes. The silhouette of a man was already above him, flickering past the spacers of the bridge. Shelby slipped into the reeds, leaving barely a ripple behind. He let himself sink below the surface. The cold clamped against his chest and he felt his hands sink down into the mud. Shelby lay there like a drowned man, the air growing hot in his lungs.
It was Gabriel that Shelby heard. As he climbed up to the tracks and crossed the Narrow River bridge, he heard his footsteps echo off the steel. They bounced back from the water ten feet below. Suddenly Gabriel had a feeling that he was being watched. He stopped and looked out at the lake and the bushes near the water’s edge. There was no sound except water lapping at the bridge pilings. It was not the first time he’d felt this. Sometimes even the trees seemed to have eyes. But this was different. He had a sense of being stared at by another person, and that this person was very close by, wearing the night and the fog. Gabriel waited for a moment longer, mouth half open to hear better, sweat cooling on his back. Nothing. He told himself his mind was playing tricks, and kept moving toward town.
In the predawn mist packed like clay between the trees, the reeds beneath the bridge began to shift. Then up from the mud and the tea-brown water rose a face. The body followed, slipping from the swampy ground, and then a figure waded to the bank. It was Shelby, dripping ooze like the first of his species coming to life. He eased himself down onto the gravel and rested his back against the stone foundation of the bridge.
He knew he had almost compromised his position again. Again he felt the anger. Now it was more like disgust. Shelby had no doubts that if he botched his job, Ungaro might send in someone else to clean up the mess. Then Shelby knew he might find himself being hunted, and he was unlikely to survive.
Shelby had come to see his jobs almost as things made of glass. If it was handled properly, the job might take place so quietly that no one would know it had happened until long after he’d disappeared. The strength of the operation would never be in question. But if even one thing went wrong, one chip to the crystal, the whole job might be ruined.
Shelby wondered who this person was who had tromped past overhead. It was a man. He had seen that much in the fragment of a second before he disappeared under the water. The silhouette, barred by the heavy tarred railroad beams, still replayed in his head, like a movie stuck on one frame. Shelby knew the man would be back, and sometime soon would walk across this bridge again. So what it became was a waiting job. The cold was in him now, clammy river cold, as if he really had been drowned. Shelby left the cover of the bridge. The sun was up, making rosewater of the clouds. He climbed to the tracks and then crossed them. On the rocks that padded the tracks, he saw a knife. It was a Gerber Mark II, dropped by some hunter, Shelby figured. He picked it up and saw old blood on the blade. Shelby had his own knife, a heavy-bladed sub-hilt with Micarta grips, custom made for him by a man named Engle out in Montana. He threw the Gerber into the river, and the last trace of Wilbur Hazard vanished under the water.
By the time the ripples had cleared, Shelby was gone, across the tracks and into the woods with barely a sound. Moving when the wind moved. When the water slapped at the shore.
Mackenzie stepped out of his car at the end of a hardscrabble road that wound up the side of Bald Mountain. It was noon. Shelby had called that morning and told him to meet him there. The bare rock at the summit was iron gray, run through with veins of glittering mica that caught the sun and winked like signal mirrors out across the Algonquin Wilderness. The wind sifted up from the valley, bringing with it the sound of chain saws.
Mackenzie heard a footstep behind him and turned.
Shelby was there, at the edge of the woods, only a few feet away. He had hiked up through the trees in case the police followed Mackenzie to the meeting place. It had taken him more than two hours to find his way through the forest. At one point, he came to the basin of a dried-up pond. At the edge of it was the wreckage of some kind of vehicle. Shelby scanned the woods for signs of an old road that might once have led down to the water’s edge, but there was none. Then, as he approached the tangle of old metal, he realized it was an airplane. Looking at the struts, which pointed at an angle from the fuselage just ahead of the open cockpit, he could tell it had once been a biplane. Mud had painted the wreck. The wings had crumpled and one had torn off completely. Only a rotted stub was left of the propeller. All that remained of the cockpit windshield was still-jagged teeth jutting from the mud-crusted frame. Shelby stood up on the remains of the lower wing and looked down into the cockpit, which appeared to have been built for two people. It was filled with dirt and leaves. There was no sign of bodies. Shelby took out a jack-knife and scraped at the fuselage. As the layers of mud flaked away, he saw traces of white paint. He figured the aircraft must have landed on the pond. Engine trouble, maybe. Shelby wondered if the fliers had survived. He shuddered. It made him lonely to think of dying in a place like this. Then he moved on quickly, because he was still a long way from the road. It took him another hour before he came in sight of it. When Mackenzie arrived, Shelby crouched in the shadows. He watched the old man pacing nervously. Then Shelby stood and walked out to the road.
“I didn’t hear you coming,” said Mackenzie.
Shelby gave a nod. His eyes were glittery with fatigue.
“Any progress?” Mackenzie asked. “The police almost caught a person last night, but he got away. I’m hoping you had better luck.”
Shelby did not tell Mackenzie that it was himself. “I saw somebody,” Shelby said.
“Where? In the woods?”
“In the woods. Yes.” Shelby studied his ring. “If he moves again, I should be able to get him.”
“Well, what if this person doesn’t move again?”
“Then presumably your troubles are over.”
Mackenzie paused as the words sank in. “Yes. Of course.” Prickly heat fanned across his forehead. He had been standing too long in the sun. “Can I ask you something? What exactly are you going to do when you find who you’re looking for?”
Shelby picked up a stone and skipped it down the road. “The best thing for now, sir, is to leave it all to me. The less you know, the fewer lies you’ll have to tell if people start asking questions.”
“People are already asking questions.”
Shelby wiped his hand slowly over his mouth, as if to brush dust from his lips. He moved away. Then he turned back suddenly. “You have to keep them out of it for as long as you can. I need things quiet until I can get the job done. Then I can get out of the way. Do you understand, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“Well, of course I do, but I can’t hold them off forever.”
“Mr. Ungaro will not stand to have his business compromised.”
“Sal Ungaro is an old friend of mine.” Mackenzie was not sure what good it did to say this.
“Mr. Ungaro has no friends.”
Mackenzie thought about this for a moment and realized it was true.
“And if my job is compromised, you are in a lot more trouble than you were when you started. I expect to leave here without a trace. Don’t make that difficult for me.” Shelby’s soft Virginia voice did not sound angry, but the threat was there in his words.
To Mackenzie, Shelby did not even seem human anymore. A nightmare flitted through his head of Shelby tearing off the rubbery flesh of his own face, revealing a bird’s nest of circuitry. “Look, I told you I think I know one of the people who’s doing the damage. It’s Madeleine. That newspaper’s involved in it somehow. Can’t you get at them through that? Show that there are people on this side of the fence who are prepared to play hardball. Some kind of warning. Then they might see …” His words died out. “You’re not going to kill anyone, are you?”
“You said you wanted them stopped.”
“I didn’t say I wanted them dead.”
“Sometimes you have to be thorough. A job with loose ends can be traced. You need the
slate wiped clean. Tabula rasa,” said Shelby.
It was the first time Mackenzie had ever heard anyone use that phrase besides himself. Now, as as the words reached him like an echo from his own mouth, he saw the finality of their meaning in a different light. He was no longer the one who swept everything aside. Instead, he was one among the multitudes, scythed down and nameless in death.
Shelby stepped back into the shadow of the pines, his blue-jean jacket fading like a piece of turquoise dropped in muddy water, until he was gone.
“Oh God,” Mackenzie said to himself and got back in his car and drove away.
As Shelby made his way along the pathless ground, he felt the same clenching of his stomach muscles and drying out of his saliva that he always felt when he was about to do something violent. He had a fear that one day he would become again what he had been in Panama, something so unspeakable that his mind had sheared all memory away, leaving him with only the leathery petals of human ears as reminders of what had happened. He knew that once a person had unleashed that part of himself, it could never be completely laid to rest.
After two hours’ sleep, lying in the depot on an old bench with a dusty tarpaulin pulled over him for a blanket, Gabriel headed back into the forest for another day of rail repair with a crew that came down from St. Johns. At five P.M., he waved good-bye to them as they headed back into Canada. Then he turned to walk the half mile to the Putt-Putt, on which he would head back to town. Sun had baked the rails. Heat rose from the creosoted ties, blurring the air. As Gabriel walked, he thought of the St. Johns crew on their way home, deep in the shadows of the forest now. He knew they would be quiet with fatigue, smoking cigarettes and rooting for odd scraps of food in their lunch boxes. Gabriel felt thirsty and his canteen was empty. He touched the corners of his mouth and scraped away the dried spit. He decided he would head down to the lake and take a drink.
