Silencer

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘I stifle my curiosity while you get to work.’

  ‘One other condition is you don’t talk with journalists.’

  ‘I see a problem,’ she said. ‘You could come back to me in a couple of days, a week, a month, and you could tell me anything you please, and I’d have to buy it.’

  ‘That’s not my style,’ Dansk said.

  Amanda stood up. She had pins and needles in her legs. ‘You’re asking me to trust you.’

  ‘I’m asking you to be reasonable,’ Dansk said. His voice was suddenly chill in a way she didn’t like. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

  She turned and looked out of the window and saw Dansk’s can of soda glint in the rainy pane. She watched his image move a little closer to hers.

  ‘What if you don’t get in touch with me? You’re not going to give me a phone number where I can reach you any time I want, are you?’

  ‘I don’t want you to walk out of this hotel feeling you’ve just talked with somebody who’s going to vanish inside some – what was the phrase you used – cubby-hole in Washington?’ Dansk took out a notebook from his pocket and scribbled something on a sheet. ‘I’m going to be in town a couple of days at least. Here’s a number where you can reach me.’

  ‘You’re not staying here?’ she asked.

  ‘This was just for the purpose of meeting you.’

  A secure room, she thought. Cloak and dagger. They did it in style. She wondered if people whose profession revolved around secrecy became addicted to it, if a life of secrecy was like being immersed for a long time in a sensory-deprivation tank. If that numb, lonely suspension did something to the way you viewed reality.

  ‘And when you leave town, where can I call you?’

  ‘I’m adding another number. This one’s highly confidential. I’m not always behind my desk, but you can leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  ‘I have your word on that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She wondered about the value of Anthony Dansk’s word. Then she thought, I’m judging him too harshly. He has his own code of rules and regulations, he has to play by the book the way it’s written. And she ought to feel some gratitude towards him for flying 2,000 miles just to talk to her – even if she’d had to apply pressure to get him here.

  ‘Are we agreed?’ he asked.

  She thought a moment and then said, ‘We’re agreed.’

  ‘Maybe a drink on the deal would be nice.’

  He sounded like a kid asking for a date, she thought. He was watching her with a certain expectation she found vaguely embarrassing, and for a moment he reminded her of the high-school loner who could never get a girl, the one who stood on his own at the edge of a crowded prom, clip-on bow-tie askew, eyes shyly scanning the dance floor.

  She glanced at her watch. ‘Why not. Gin, if there’s any, and tonic.’

  He walked to the mini-bar. ‘There’s no ice.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said.

  Dansk brought her the gin and tonic.

  She sipped the drink and looked at him over the rim of her glass. She noticed he had a habit of turning his face to one side every now and then to hide the birthmark from sight. He had to go through life that way, she thought, his face forever turned a little to one side. The birthmark obviously burdened him.

  He said, ‘Why did you quit law?’

  ‘You’ve been researching my background, Anthony.’

  ‘I’d hardly call it research. When I knew I was coming to meet you, I figured I ought to know who I was talking to, that’s all. Your resignation’s no big secret.’

  ‘Why I quit law. Too many reasons. Mainly I was becoming polluted after years working with liars and flimflam artists and human eczema. I’d reached an unhealthy level of toxicity, and I wasn’t prepared to go on paying the price.’

  ‘Human eczema,’ he said.

  ‘Suppurations masquerading as people.’

  ‘Harsh words.’

  ‘You asked.’ She listened to rain spray against the window. A wind was getting up and the trees shook outside, flickering the lamps.

  She finished her drink. ‘I have to be going.’

  She shook his hand, then he opened the door for her in such a way that she had to duck under his outstretched arm. She stepped into the corridor.

  She said, ‘I was a little overheated before. I apologize for that.’

  ‘Already forgotten, Amanda. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’

  ‘Meantime, you’d be wise to get away for a while. The rest is under control.’

  She went down the stairs, crossed the lobby and walked outside. She sat in her parked car and looked out at the night and realized she didn’t like the dark. Rain drummed on the roof. She’d done her duty, she’d dropped the whole mess in somebody else’s lap. At least it would make Rhees a happy man. She turned the key in the ignition just as Dansk came out of the hotel and walked in a sprightly way across the parking-lot. He passed within 20 yards of her car, but his range of vision was limited by his big black umbrella, and he didn’t see her.

  For some reason she had an urge to follow him, but she resisted it.

  28

  In his own hotel room, Dansk undid his necktie and hung it just so in the closet. There was a knock on his door. He went to answer it. The girl was about nineteen and waiflike. She had big brown eyes and a tiny oval face.

  ‘You’re expecting me,’ she said. ‘Chaka? From Romantic Liaisons?’

  ‘Yeah, come in, come in.’

  She asked him what he wanted and he said, ‘Nothing exotic.’

  ‘You got it,’ she said. She undressed in front of him, stepped out of her white miniskirt, slid down her tights and her black panties. She wore no bra: she didn’t need one. She lay on the bed and he placed his hand on her taut belly. Navels intrigued him. A navel was like a tiny eye of flesh.

  She smelled of talcum powder. Her armpits had been shaved. Her pubic hair had been razored also. Vaginal topiary. He’d once seen a hooker in El Paso with her pubes cut heart-shaped, like a furry valentine between her legs.

  He took off his pants and folded them over a chair. Chaka was watching him and waiting, checking her internal meter. Tick, tick, time is money. He removed his shirt. She put her hand inside his yellow and white polka-dot shorts and stroked him for a while.

  ‘I don’t feel anything stirring in here,’ she remarked.

  A breakdown of the machinery was the last thing he needed. He wanted release, his valve opened, pressure let out. The girl propped herself on an elbow and looked at him.

  ‘You wanna watch me jerk off, get you going?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ His head wasn’t sending signals down to the central furnace. Boiler-room failure. What’s going on here, he wondered.

  She spread her legs and rubbed a finger in the slit of herself. Her nails were red. Her little mouth was open. Dansk could see her fillings way back and the dark cavity of her throat. And then suddenly he was out in that goddam desert and he was wondering how close Amanda Scholes had been to McTell and Pasquale and their hounds. She’d said a mile, maybe two. Some margins were way too narrow.

  Easy, easy, Anthony.

  The girl had her hand inside his shorts again. ‘I guess my charms ain’t doing it for you. For extra, I could blow you.’

  Dansk didn’t like putting his cock in anybody’s mouth. He’d tried it but he’d felt uncomfortably vulnerable, thinking what would happen if the woman had a brainstorm during the act, or some form of feminist-bitch revenge agenda, and decided to bite a chunk out of his dick.

  Suddenly he caught her hand and squeezed it. Her bones were tiny. He imagined he had a small delicate bird trapped in his closed palm and how simple it would be to crush it. Squeezy-oh and snap.

  ‘Ow,’ she said.

  For a moment Dansk found himself contemplating the notion of pulverizing the hooker’s small hand. He thought of the noise the bones would ma
ke as they broke, a bag of brittle little sticks. As a kid, he’d once shot a pigeon with an air rifle, and he remembered how it dropped off a ledge and lay broken-winged and bloody on the sidewalk, a sickly substance oozing out of the beak. That bird had been a long time dying, spasming on the ground. His mother had told him, You don’t kill God’s creatures, Anthony.

  It’s only a pigeon, billions of them in the world, and God cares about one?

  His eye is on the sparrow, sweetpea.

  ‘Hey, hey, you!’ the girl said, tugging to be free of him.

  He released the girl’s hand. He felt lopsided. The zip of the air rifle, the pigeon falling, what had he experienced at the time? A little surge of power or some kind of regret, he couldn’t target it now. A kid blowing a bird away for the hell of it, just because the boy had a weapon and the bird happened to be where it was at that particular moment in time. Things converge, eddies of pure chance, like Galindez in that goddam river. Some things you can’t foresee.

  The girl rubbed her knuckles and said, ‘I bruise easy, mister.’

  Dansk gave the girl fifty bucks, two twenties and a ten. She was still rubbing the hand he’d squeezed and giving him a wary stare. He had an urge to grab her again and this time press his fingernails into her veins until he’d drawn blood.

  She dressed. She had it down to a quick-getaway art as a safeguard against loony clients. He turned aside from her. He listened to all the sounds she made, the snap of panty elastic, tights rolling over flesh like a second skin, the meshing of a zipper.

  ‘You’re a real dipshit, buster,’ she said.

  Dipshit. He had an image of Amanda Scholes’s face, and he wondered if there was some bizarre connection between his failure with the hooker and the encounter with the lady prosecutor, a distraction on a level he hadn’t been aware of. He thought of the Sanchez woman phoning. OK, so her state of mind was one of dislocation, but that wasn’t the point. She might have been lucid. It was no way to run a business like this. You couldn’t depend on luck. You had to shape your destiny.

  He walked quickly across the room. The girl had the door halfway open. He kicked it shut. ‘Dipshit, huh?’ He realized he was breathing a little too hard. He gripped her shoulder. He could feel bone and imagined he heard her heart beat. Anger foamed through him. He wasn’t thinking, he was listening to this tide and the persistent voices it carried.

  ‘I’m a dipshit? That what you called me? A dipshit?’

  She said, ‘Don’t fucking touch me, I warn you.’

  The girl tried to shrug his hand away but his grip was too tight. Just do it. Do it, Anthony. He punched her in the mouth, slammed her against the wall, punched her again and her head snapped back, but somehow she managed to get her teeth round his wrist, nipping his flesh with her teeth. It was like the pain of catching your skin in a zipper. He pulled his arm away and grabbed her by the hips and spun her round, striking the side of her face with an open palm. She crumpled into a crouching position. He stared down at her and the tide receded in his brain and then there was hollow silence.

  The girl looked up at him. Already there was a discolouration around her mouth. He made a slight motion of his hand and she flinched, pulling her head to one side.

  He turned away from her, didn’t look as she got to her feet and opened the door. He heard a quick intake of her breath, as if she were struggling against tears. He studied his hand. He thought, You move certain muscles and a hand becomes a fist, a weapon. You give in to an impulse and discipline dies inside you. A moment of rage.

  And here’s the kicker: weirdly pleasant.

  He heard the door close. She could go to the cops, he thought, but she wouldn’t, not in her profession.

  The problem with rage is you can’t focus it: it overflows, goes in all directions, you strike out at whoever’s within range. But you don’t need rage. Everything’s under control. You were Mr Smooth. You set out your wares and the former prosecutor, a discerning customer, listens to your pitch, and before she knows it she’s buying. She’s buying your plastic, your whole story, and then she’s homeward bound, carrying her stack of purchases from Honest Anthony’s Bazaar. She’s home safe with her lover, her worries alleviated, her concerns eased.

  But …

  You never really know. Other people are mysteries, planets unto themselves. I’m at a loose end right now, she’d said. This bothered him. A bright woman, formerly very busy, with too much time on her hands. A little bored. She wouldn’t be the type to sit around crocheting or inclined over a cookbook studying a recipe for fucking bouillabaisse. And you couldn’t see her serving soup in some tent-town for the homeless roaches of the nation. So what does she do with her time?

  Dansk’s Law: You can never sit back and get complacent. Another person’s life was alien territory and you needed to map and monitor it until you were absolutely certain. And if it came right down to it, you needed to bring pressures to bear.

  He was a master at pressures.

  He walked up and down the room for a time, turning possibilities round and round. She’ll drop it, she won’t drop it. His fingers were beginning to ache from the impact of his punches. It wasn’t a bad sensation.

  He picked up the phone and dialled the number for the decrepit motel in south Phoenix where McTell and Pasquale were staying. It was called the Hideaway Knolls, situated on a busy intersection with nothing remotely resembling a knoll in miles.

  McTell answered, first ring.

  Dansk said, ‘She was in the desert, McTell. The prosecutor was in the goddam desert at exactly the same time as you and your dufus associate. Have you any idea how close you came to having an eyewitness? She heard the dogs, McTell.’

  ‘She see us?’ McTell asked.

  ‘You got lucky. But that’s not the point, the point is carelessness. The point is keeping your eyes and ears open and making absolutely goddam sure there’s nobody around when you work.’

  ‘How were we meant to know somebody was out there? It’s a big dark fucking place, the desert.’

  ‘You don’t pay close attention, Eddie. You smell blood and everything else flies out the window – like the possibility of an eyewitness. I’m trying to run this business in a professional way. Professional, McTell. You know that word? You heard it before?’

  McTell said, ‘I don’t unnerstand your beef, Anthony. If she didn’t see us where’s the hassle? It’s history. I still say surgery’s the answer.’

  Dansk ignored this. ‘I want you and Pasquale to meet me. There’s a Denny’s joint off the interstate on Thomas. You’ll find it. Forty-five minutes.’

  He hung up and stepped inside the bathroom. He wanted to shower. He wanted the good feeling that came when pressurized water tingled against your body and all the grime and germs you’d accumulated during the day went swirling in grey-white foam down through pipes and into the rancid labyrinthine dark of the sewers.

  29

  Amanda drove until she came to a cocktail bar about a mile from her house. She parked outside, thinking about Rhees, who’d be in bed reading some heavy academic tome through the little half-moon glasses that made him look ecclesiastical. She went inside the bar, which was deep in shadow. A few lonesome drinkers, a mulatto girl playing the piano and singing ‘I Got You Under My Skin’ in a feathery little voice.

  She asked for a gin and tonic, fidgeted with a coaster, rolling it round between her fingers. She looked around the room. A sign in one corner read, ‘Rest rooms. Telephone.’ She didn’t move at once. This behaviour came firmly under the category of sneaky activity, but the idea of further disapprobation from John didn’t enchant her.

  She scanned the bar again: shadowy faces, strangers, the girl at the piano. She was thinking of Dansk’s advice. Take a vacation. Go far away. She tried to imagine his investigation, but she had no idea what it involved, and this niggled her. She was beset by an incomplete feeling, like a Scrabble tile she couldn’t use, a solitaire card that wasn’t playable.

  Go ahead, satisfy y
ourself. Cut off that troubling little hangnail of doubt you have. She walked in the direction of the telephone. She took from her jacket the sheet of paper Dansk had given her. She fed a coin into the slot and dialled the number.

  A woman’s voice came on the line and said, ‘The Carlton. How may I help you?’

  ‘Anthony Dansk,’ she said.

  ‘One moment please.’

  Amanda listened to the ringing tone. Dansk answered, a little breathless.

  ‘This is Amanda Scholes,’ she said. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘I was just getting out the shower.’ He sounded cheerful.

  ‘I realized I didn’t give you our phone number,’ she said.

  ‘I figured you’d be in the book.’

  ‘We’re in the Phoenix directory, but you might need the out-of-town number, which is unlisted.’

  ‘You’ve decided to go away?’ he asked.

  ‘We have a cabin upstate.’

  ‘Sounds nice. OK. Pencil’s at the ready.’

  She gave him the number. He said, ‘Got it.’

  ‘Don’t forget me,’ she said.

  ‘No chance of that, Amanda.’ He said good night.

  She hung up the phone, lingered, tapped her fingers on the directory. No chance of that, Amanda.

  She picked up the handset again and hesitated, then she pushed a handful of coins into the slot. She imagined a twenty-four-hour hotline, an operator who would pick up. Instead, she received a recorded message uttered by a man who sounded as if he had severe laryngitis.

  ‘Department of Justice. You have reached the office of Anthony Dansk. Mr Dansk isn’t available to take your call at present. Kindly leave a message. Your call will be returned as soon as possible. There is no need to leave the date and time of your message because this is automatically recorded. Thank you.’ She put the phone back. An answering machine with a croak in its throat. The desk of Anthony Dansk. The recorded message in a voice that wasn’t his.

  She wondered about this all the way back to her car.