Rough Draft

by James W. Hall

  Helen sat forward in her chair, craned around for a face-off with Frank.

  “Let me remind you, Agent Sheffield, you’re here merely as a consultant. Whether or not you understand and approve of all the nuances of our strategy is quite irrelevant. The only other thing you need to know is that the operation has a running time of exactly seventy-two hours. No more, no less.”

  “Seventy-two hours? What, the Bureau’s run short of funds again?”

  Helen Shane sliced him with a glare.

  “We’re limited by certain technical restraints that will become clear to you later. So, that’s all we have. Seventy-two hours to catch Hal Bonner. But let’s get this clear, Agent Sheffield, we’re not asking for your approval on any of this.”

  Frank looked across at the FBI seal. Mouth shut.

  “Frankly,” the senator said, “I like the seventy-two-hour time frame. When Bonner realizes he has only three days to get to Fielding, the time pressure will be just the thing to make him blunder. He thinks this is his last chance to locate Fielding, he starts to hurry, makes a mistake. That’s when we take him.”

  Ackerman raised his big right hand and slapped the table hard, crushing the very thought of Hal Bonner.

  The room was silent for a moment, everyone watching Ackerman’s palm grinding against the glossy wood.

  Helen Shane cleared her throat, gave the senator a small smile, and said, “There’ll be more detailed briefings this afternoon after lunch, then we’ll get everything in place on Sunday, and we’ll commence the operation at one minute after midnight Monday morning. So do you think you can take seventy-two hours out of your schedule next week, Frank? Put aside your other assignments and give us three days of your valuable time?”

  Frank stared across the far wall. The flush-mounted television was dark now. This was the last group of people on earth he wanted to spend time with. He’d rather lock himself in a room with a dozen copperheads.

  “Did you see the pictures of Joanie, Frank?” the senator said.

  “I saw them, sir.”

  “Maybe you need to take another look. Refresh your memory. See what’s at stake here.”

  Frank looked down the long table at Abraham Ackerman. The senator had been intimidating generals so long he’d probably started to believe his power was boundless. But losing his daughter like that must have been a brutal reminder of the limits of his authority.

  Sheffield picked up the snapshot of Hal Bonner and took another look.

  Helen leaned close, lowering her voice.

  “He’s got that kamikaze thing going, doesn’t he? A guy who doesn’t mind dying, but by god he’s going to take as many others down with him as he can.”

  Frank looked at her. Pretty woman with a cold, slippery smile.

  “So are you on board, Frank?” Ackerman said.

  Sheffield turned back to the senator.

  “I’m not my father,” Frank said. “Not even close.”

  “We’re aware of your record,” the senator said. “But I wanted you to have this opportunity. A larger venue, a chance to excel.”

  Helen chuckled.

  Maybe what the woman needed was something a little stronger than a slap. Like a short jab to the solar plexus.

  “Sure,” Frank said. “I guess I could shift some things around on my calendar.”

  The senator nodded curtly. A man used to getting his way.

  He stood up, stepped over to Charlie Pettigrew, and the two men huddled in the corner of the room.

  Sheffield kept his seat, staring at the blank TV screen. He was trying to figure out why the mention of Hannah Keller’s name had put an extra bump in his pulse.

  “Welcome aboard, Frank,” Helen said, “This should be fun.”

  He turned slowly and squinted at her.

  “Fun?”

  “Sure,” she said. “And maybe you’ll even learn something.”

  “Yeah? And what the hell am I going to learn from you, Shane?”

  “Maybe how to act like a grown-up.”

  “Trust me,” Frank said. “It’ll take more than seventy-two hours to accomplish that.”

  TWO

  Monday morning, 11 A.M., Hal was in Milwaukee.

  Every city was the same. Buildings and streets and sidewalks and cars, horns honking, airplanes flying overhead, places to shop, places to work. The cities had different names but that was the only difference Hal Bonner could see.

  Hal was in a hotel, it could be any hotel. Standing at the front desk. There was a black woman in a white blouse and burgundy skirt behind the desk typing on her computer. She looked up at him and asked if she could be of any help.

  “I locked myself out of my room.”

  “What room is it, sir?”

  “Fifteen twenty-six.”

  She tapped on her computer.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to see some ID, sir.”

  “My wallet’s locked in my room. I went to get some ice and the door shut and locked me out.” He held up the ice bucket he’d taken from a maid’s cart.

  The young woman considered her options. She looked down the counter at the tall man who was the manager. He was on the phone with someone.

  “And could I have your name, sir?”

  “Randy Gianetti.”

  The young woman looked at her computer screen. She made a face to herself, coming to a decision. Then she opened a drawer and took out a credit card room key and ran it through the magnetizing unit and handed it to him.

  “Thank you very much,” said Hal.

  “You’re welcome. Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Gianetti.”

  He stood there for a moment. Maybe he was supposed to say something else. He wasn’t sure. No one had ever said that to him before. Sorry for the inconvenience. That was a new one.

  “You’re welcome,” he said to her.

  He could tell from her look that this wasn’t the right response.

  He nodded and smiled. That usually worked when he’d made a mistake. Or sometimes he shrugged.

  At that moment the desk clerk’s phone rang and she answered it. Hal stood there a few seconds longer, then turned and went back to the elevator.

  Hal looked at himself in the mirrored walls of the elevator. He was wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt. His hair was cut very short. He wasn’t good-looking or bad-looking. He resembled a lot of people.

  He got off on the fifteenth floor. He took two steps to his right and looked over the railing. He could see fifteen stories down into the lobby where there were trees and a fountain and people milling around. He could see the counter where he’d just been. The black woman on the phone. She had forgotten about him by now. Later she would remember him when the police came, but by then it would be too late. She would describe Hal and the police would make sketches. He’d seen some of the sketches. His employer had sent them to him so he could see what the authorities had. The sketches always looked like someone else. Someone meaner than Hal, someone dumber.

  Hal found room 1526. NONSMOKING it said on a silver plaque. There was a peephole above the plaque.

  Hal stuck the credit card key in the slot and pulled it out and the small green light came on and he pushed the door open.

  Randy Gianetti was sitting on the side of the bed smoking a cigarette and lacing up his right shoe. He had black hair, curly.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “This is a nonsmoking room,” Hal said. “There is a plaque on the door.”

  “Who the hell are you, coming in here like that?”

  “My name is Hal.”

  “What’re you going to do, bust me for smoking in my room? Jesus.”

  “Are you Randy Gianetti of Detroit, Michigan?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Randy Gianetti, I was sent here by people you have cheated.”

  Randy took the cigarette from his mouth.

  “Hey, get in line, fella,” he said. Trying to joke with Hal, giving him a stupid grin. L
ike he was going to try to be his buddy, kid his way out of this.

  “You may remember Jose Cardona. He lives in South America. He shipped you some merchandise, but the money you were supposed to pay him never arrived in his bank account.”

  “It didn’t?”

  The man started to stand up, but Hal stepped forward and shoved him back onto the bed. He was a big man, taller and heavier than Hal, but not nearly as muscular. There was a silver pistol lying on the bedside table. But the man was used to kidding his way out of trouble. He was sneaky, not strong. Not a dangerous man. Hal could tell all that in an instant. It was in the man’s eyes. It was in his sweat, his odor, the shape of his mouth, the way his eyes moved. It was in his clothes. The shiny blue shirt he wore, the heavy gold bracelet. Everything about the man was weak.

  “I’ve got the money,” Randy said. “Actually, you want to know the truth, I got it with me in that suitcase over there. The full amount Really. Take a look. It’s in hundred-dollar bills. I been scraping it together. I know it’s a little late, but it’s there, all of it, every single last dollar.”

  “I don’t want money.”

  “You just said …”

  “I’m not a bill collector,” Hal said.

  He had used this line before and had seen the thing happen in their eyes. The same thing that was happening in Randy’s eyes, all his false courage fizzling. A weak man terrified. Desperate. Going to lunge for his gun. Try anything he could to squirm out of danger.

  Hal was calm. This moment was exactly like the moment before it and the moment that would come after it. Every moment was equal. He was always alert, always relaxed. He was a bird pecking for worms in the damp grass, ready to eat or burst into flight. He was a snake sunning himself on a rock. Tranquil and alert, relaxed and vigilant.

  The phone in his pocket chirped.

  “That mine or yours?” Randy said. Trying another smile.

  Hal took out the phone and said yes.

  The voice in his ear was a woman’s. She worked in an office in Panama or perhaps Costa Rica. Every week or two it changed. He’d been in some of those offices. One desk, two phones, a fax. A woman answering the phone who didn’t know anyone’s name or even who she worked for. A woman who was good at dictation, taking it all down word for word, passing messages on. Remembering none of it.

  “Yes, it’s Hal,” he said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  It was amazing, talking to this faraway woman. Hal’s voice was penetrating the walls of this room. Zooming out into the sky and bouncing from one satellite to the next, zing, zing, across the black vacuum of space. Hal Bonner was in two places at once, three, four places, multiple Hals zinging around the solar system.

  The woman spoke to him for several moments, explaining his next assignment, then said, “Do you understand?”

  Hal watched Randy Gianetti of Detroit. Randy was still trying to decide if he should lunge for his gun. It was the most important decision he would ever make and he had not prepared himself for it. He had lost his instincts for survival. His reactions were slow and uncertain. He had talked his way out of danger too many times. Now that was his only skill.

  “Do you understand?” the woman said. “You will be able to find Deatkwatch.com on the Internet?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “So finish up whatever you’re doing, Joe says, get right on this. It’s urgent. And something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said if you don’t get it right this time, if you don’t find Fielding, Joe is going to have to make a personnel change.”

  “A personnel change,” Hal said.

  “You understand what that means?”

  “I understand,” Hal said. “Good-bye.”

  The woman said good-bye and hung up.

  Hal put the phone back in his pocket. The phone was smaller than a wallet. He would keep this phone for a few more days, then he would pitch it in a garbage can and buy another one. It was harder that way for people to listen in, track him down. Hal was not stupid.

  “There are only two ways to kill a person,” Hal said. “Did you know that, Randy?”

  “Only two ways,” the man said. He was having trouble with his voice. It was dry and scratchy.

  “Yes,” Hal said. “Either you attack the heart or you attack the brain.”

  “Yeah? Okay.”

  “Myself, I prefer the heart.”

  Randy glanced back at the gun on the bedside table.

  “You’re that guy,” Randy said. “The one they send, you don’t use anything, just your hands. That’s who you are, isn’t it?”

  “That’s who I am.”

  Randy looked at the blank wall. His face was soft now. Eyes watering.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus, Mother, and Mary. I thought you were like an urban myth.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know, like a lie. A fiction.”

  “No,” Hal said. “I’m real.”

  Randy turned his head and looked at Hal.

  “Is it quick, the way you do it?”

  “Not particularly, no.”

  “Is there a lot of pain?”

  “From what I can tell, yes, I think there is.”

  “Shit,” Randy said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Randy sniffed and wiped his nose.

  “You could take the money,” he said. “It’s all yours. No one would ever know.”

  “I’m going to take it anyway,” Hal said.

  “Shit,” he said. “Jesus God.” His eyes were watering more.

  “Would you like to use your gun, Randy, or do you want me to do it my way?”

  The man lifted his cigarette and took a drag on it and blew out the smoke.

  “You’d let me do it?” Randy said. “Really?”

  “I don’t care. If you’d rather not be the one for whatever reason, religion or something, I don’t mind. But you have to decide right now. I’ve got other business to take care of.”

  The man looked at him. He was cowering. It was what animals did when they were cornered. They signaled the attacker that they offered no resistance. They were not a threat. It sometimes worked in the wild. Sometimes they escaped by cowering. But in a hotel room in Milwaukee it was useless.

  Hal stared at the man and said nothing. Randy sighed.

  “All right,” Randy said.

  “Which is it?”

  “I guess I’d rather do it myself. If it’s all the same to you.”

  Hal stepped over to the bedside table and picked up the pistol.

  “It’s better in the shower,” Hal said. “Less noise, less mess.”

  The man followed Hal into the bedroom. He hesitated a moment outside the shower, grimacing at Hal like he’d changed his mind. Hal just looked back at him, hard, unblinking. Then Randy began to strip off his clothes and when he was down to his underpants, he said, “Can I leave these on?”

  “Sure,” Hal said. “Whatever you want.”

  Randy got in the shower in his underpants and turned on the water. The hot water and the cold, getting it the right temperature. Then he stepped under the full force of the spray. Hal handed him the pistol. The man looked at the gun in his hand and he looked at Hal.

  “I could shoot you,” he said.

  Hal nodded.

  “You could try.”

  The man put his face into the stream of water, then he looked back at Hal. He was holding the pistol by his side.

  “I fucked up,” the man said. “I thought I was so smart.”

  “Sorry to inconvenience you,” Hal said.

  Randy looked at him. Puzzled. He swallowed.

  He raised the pistol and pressed the muzzle against his temple.

  He cocked the hammer back. Then he took the barrel away from his temple and slid it into his mouth.

  His hand quivered, but he could not bring himself to fire.

  He withdrew the barrel and looked at Hal.


  “I’m not sure how to do it, which way is best.”

  “A big gun like that,” Hal said. “One way is probably as good as the other.”

  “All right,” Randy said. “All right then.”

  He jammed the barrel against his temple. He closed his eyes hard and fired.

  Hal stepped back to avoid the spray. He watched Randy Gianetti’s body slump to the floor of the shower.

  Hal stayed there a few seconds more, watching the blood swirl down the silver drain. Randy Gianetti was twitching. But he didn’t twitch for long.

  * * *

  The taxi driver took Hal to an electronics store. Best one in Milwaukee. It looked like every other electronics store to Hal.

  “Wait for me,” Hal told the taxi driver. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  He went in the store and found a young clerk. He was a boy with long hair and a skinny face. He had acne and was chewing gum.

  “Help you?” the boy said.

  “I want the Internet,” Hal said.

  “Do what?”

  “I want the Internet. I want to carry it with me.”

  “Oh,” the boy said. “You mean wireless. A cell phone built into a palm-top computer. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “All right,” Hal said. “Let me see it.”

  “I’ve got the Nokia 9000IL Communicator. It’s got a 386 processor, hands-free speakerphone, mobile Internet access, fourteen ounces, three-hour active battery life. That’s my top-of-the-line model.”

  “Show it to me.”

  “It ain’t cheap,” the boy said. “Close to a thousand bucks.”

  “Show it to me now.”

  The boy took a longer look at Hal. Hearing the thing Hal could bring to his voice, the thing that made the boy’s bristles stiffen.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said. “Right away.”

  “And then you’re going to explain it to me. How it works. How I find this place, Deathwatch.com.”

  “What’s that, a Web page?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Sure, no problem,” the kid said. “I’ll just see if we got the Nokia in stock. They’re pretty cool.”

  “Good,” Hal said. “I’ll wait here.”

  The boy trotted away.

  Hal stood at the counter and looked up at the televisions mounted high on the wall. Ten television sets and all of them were showing Hal. Hal Bonner, the main feature, a guy standing at a counter looking up at himself, like he was waiting for the man on the screen to do something. To smile or make a joke. But Hal did nothing. He simply waited and watched himself wait in each of the ten screens mounted high on the wall.