Silencer

by Campbell Armstrong

30

  She was aware of sunlight against her closed eyelids and the sound of the doorbell ringing. She heard John get out of bed and leave the room. She drew a bedsheet round her face and tried to get back to sleep, but Rhees returned and said, ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

  She opened one eye. The sun was a slit of revolting light. ‘Who?’

  ‘Dom Concannon,’ he said.

  ‘What ungodly time is it?’

  ‘Eight-forty.’

  ‘What the hell does he want at eight-forty?’

  ‘Who knows? I’ll brew some coffee,’ Rhees said.

  Amanda sat up. She dragged herself slowly inside the bathroom, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair, then decided she didn’t need to look her best. It was only Concannon, after all. She entered the living-room in her robe and blinked at Dom, whom she liked well enough except for the fact that he was always bright and switched-on, irritating if you’d only just awakened.

  He was sitting on the sofa, long legs stretched out. ‘Got you out of bed, eh?’

  She said, ‘Just don’t do your stage Irish bit, promise me.’

  ‘And here I was practising bejaysus.’

  She sat down facing Concannon. He had a big frank face and untidy fair hair. His family had emigrated seventy years ago from Cork. He was an expert on the subject of Celtic religious artefacts. Like Rhees with his sporadic Welshness, Concannon was another herb in the American stockpot.

  ‘Just tink of me as yer postman,’ he said.

  ‘You promised, Dom,’ she said.

  ‘It comes over me and I can’t for the life of me stop. What can I say?’

  ‘As little as possible would be considered a start,’ she suggested.

  Rhees came in from the kitchen with a jug of coffee and three cups on a tray. He set it down on the table and poured. Amanda sipped and waited for the brew to kick in.

  ‘What’s this postman business?’ she asked.

  Concannon took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘This came for you care of the office. It looks like it’s been in the wars.’

  She looked at the creased brown envelope. Her eyesight was out of focus. ‘You didn’t come just to bring me this, did you?’

  ‘I’ve been missing you around and the letter gave me a good excuse, and anyway I happened to be in the vicinity. So, how are you doing?’

  ‘OK for a person whose sleep has just been rudely interrupted by a fake Irishman. Don’t you have cases to try or something?’

  ‘Matter of fact, yeah. There’s this interesting little thing I’ve got in court in a couple of hours. Some guy selling humongous parcels of Northern Arizona that aren’t his to sell. Complicated fraud, involving misuse of the US mails. The guy says he’s been framed by an associate. Same old, same old. Your friend Randy Hanseimer is defending.’

  ‘Kick ass, Dom.’ She took another mouthful of coffee and turned the envelope over in her hand. She still wasn’t focusing properly. She made out her name scribbled in caps with a ball-point. The stamp was stuck on upside down.

  ‘Funny business about Galindez,’ Concannon said. ‘I thought he was protected. The whisper going round is you’re worried about witness security.’

  She said nothing. She wondered about whispers, leaves stirring on the old grapevine. Gaggles of attorneys gossiping in stairwells, feeding on this snippet of truth or that crumb of misinformation.

  ‘I understand they don’t tell you shit, those Witness Program guys,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a whole lotta experience of them, but from what I gather they run their business like Fort Knox.’

  ‘Allegedly.’

  Concannon drew his long legs back and rearranged his sprawl. ‘If I can help, let me know. Because if there’s a leak in the Program, it’s bad news.’ He finished his coffee and then stood up. Six feet four and legs like stalks. ‘Gotta run. Nail another shithead to the cross of justice. Oh, before I forget, you had a phone call day before yesterday. Bernadette Vialli.’

  ‘Bernadette Vialli?’

  ‘A blast from the past,’ Concannon said. ‘Said she wanted to talk to you about something. I said I’d have you call her.’ He touched his forelock in an exaggerated way. ‘Good luck to ye, me dear.’

  She picked up a cushion to toss at him, but he’d already slipped out the door and was gone. She wondered a moment about Bernadette Vialli, whom she recalled as a small bespectacled widow with permed hair. She remembered her son, Benny, and the shy way he’d answered questions in the witness-stand. A pale downtrodden kid, he’d directed his gaze somewhere into mid-air, never once meeting the eyes of the two defendants who stared at him with brooding hatred. Both were blood relations, Uncle Charlie Ravanelli and Uncle Giovanni ‘Ironhead’ Luccini, a couple of funereal mob types who’d seen too many Mafia films and had copied all the moves and the mumblings. Not the brightest kid on the block, Benny had drifted into the old family businesses: extortion, narcotics, prostitution. He was the invisible nephew and nobody paid him much attention. Run here, run there, fetch, fetch, fetch. The eager gofer. But Benny had a memory that was almost photographic, and when his time came in court he was an encyclopedia of names and places, dates and conversations he could remember verbatim. A prosecutor’s wet dream.

  Rhees said, ‘I didn’t hear you come in last night.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

  ‘How was your undercover meeting?’

  She briefly told him about the talk with Dansk.

  ‘You’re suitably reassured,’ he said, ‘so now we can get back to the pines?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m not hearing absolute certainty,’ he said, and gave her a doubtful look.

  She gazed again at her name on the front of the envelope and noticed the postmark. She raised her face towards Rhees and felt blood rush through her head, and when she ripped the envelope open it seemed to her that her hands were numb and not her own and a strange wind, like a cyclone twisting through a canyon, stormed in her ears.

  31

  Pasquale was parked across from the entrance to the cul-de-sac. He had a map spread against the steering-wheel and he was frowning like a tourist who’d lost his way in the complexity of a strange city.

  He raised his face and looked towards the cul-de-sac. Nothing moved there. Iffy kind of morning. Bright sun, then clouds, then sun again.

  His phone buzzed. He picked it up and heard McTell say, ‘Lavatory cleaner. That would be the worst job I could think of.’

  This was a game they’d been playing back and forth. McTell was parked a couple of blocks away. They changed locations every so often in accordance with Dansk’s instructions.

  ‘It don’t beat morgue beautician,’ Pasquale remarked. ‘Lipstick on corpses, eye-shadow on stiffs, rouge on dead cheeks.’

  McTell said, ‘Naw, that’s kindergarten stuff. Picture this. You come into work and it’s the early a.m., you got your brush and your bucket and your disinfectant, you don’t know what you’re gonna find in the cubicles: vomit, unflushed shit, diarrhoea, piss all over the floor, used condoms leaking, junkie needles. Hey, I just thought of something worse even. A lavatory cleaner with a big momma of a hangover.’

  ‘Pretty gross,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘You come up with anything better than a lavatory cleaner with a hangover like death, you call me. What’s happening where you are?’

  Pasquale said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I hate this waiting shit. You get all tensed up because you don’t know if you’re gonna do the job or if you ain’t gonna do it. Waiting makes me pissed. Dansk makes me pissed. He wants us to create this … what’s he call it? A diversion? Create your own fucking diversions, Anthony. Shove them up your ass.’

  ‘He pays good money, plus some nice bonuses. You don’t have to like the guy.’ Pasquale tore out a square section of his map and began to fold it.

  ‘Sometimes all I ask is some credit,’ McTell remarked. ‘He treats you like crap. He has you running here, running there, u
p and down this whole fucking state. He don’t give respect where it’s due.’

  ‘He likes to think he’s perfect,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘Perfect my ass.’

  ‘He picks up the tab,’ Pasquale said. ‘He calls the shots.’

  ‘Oh sure, he calls the shots, all right, but we’re the ones do the actual shooting, Bruno. You don’t see Tony Birthmark out there. He’s like somebody just dropped in from another planet. You ever see this whole deal he goes through every morning before coffee?’

  ‘No,’ Pasquale said, working the segment of map between his fingers. Then he studied the paper dart he’d made, adjusted it and propelled it through the open window. It caught a pocket of air and drifted in smooth flight for some way before nosediving into shrubbery. Kamikaze.

  McTell said, ‘Check this, it’s unreal. First, he flosses with mint-flavoured, wax-coated floss made in Holland or somewhere. Second, he has this Turkish or Indian wooden tongue-scraper that takes all the overnight shit off your tongue. Next, brushes his teeth with Sensodyne. Always Sensodyne. Then he rinses with this stuff, Per something, Peridex, I ain’t sure. You’d think that would cover the oral hygiene, right? Uh-uh, there’s more. He rounds things off with a salt-water gargle. Always bottled water, never straight outta the faucet, and always sea-salt. He carries round this little salt-shaker kinda thing. I wouldn’t wanna be bacteria wandering loose inside Dansk’s mouth. It’d be like a holocaust. And I haven’t even started on the hair tonic and the whole shaving ritual and the stuff with the fingernails and the hundred quick press-ups.’

  ‘It’s what I said, Eddie. Perfectionist.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said McTell.

  32

  Amanda smoothed the pages and gazed out into the backyard without seeing anything in particular, the long grass, the swimming-pool, the young grapefruit trees whose waxy leaves played tricks with the light. What she kept hearing was Isabel’s voice, the way it issued from two pages of cheap notepaper.

  She lit a cigarette and said to Rhees, ‘I know it’s too damned early but I need a drink.’ She rose from the table, went to the liquor cabinet, poured a shot of brandy, sniffed the fumes and drank.

  Rhees was bent over the letter, studying it the way he might study the long-lost first draft of a major poem. She wondered what he saw in it, if he was trying to read between the lines. She thought of the misspelled words, the lack of punctuation and the spidery, back-slanting letters and the curious alignments and how they reflected Isabel Sanchez’s state of mind.

  She finished the brandy. She’d read the letter again, for the forty-second time, it seemed. She wasn’t counting. She walked back to the table. The brandy made a fiery lasso round her heart.

  Manda, I hope this gets to you, they’re behind me two guys take me in this big kinda van

  and Galindez is there also and this surprises me ̵ I don’t expect to be traveling noplace with him, he don’t like me.

  he sits up front with one guy and Im in the back with the other and this guy tells me how Im gonna like my new life

  Galindez keeps saying he wishes hed kept his big mouth shut, so then it gets dark and we’re drivin and then the bad shit happens – the van comes to a stop Galindez jumps out and the two guys go after him and

  theres gunshots and Im scared and I think the best thing is for me to get the hell away before the two guys come back.

  I get outta the van and I hear one of the guys say stoopid motherfucker and the other says what we gonna do with conchita now.

  I move real quiet into the trees.

  I hear one of them calling out conchita where are you and I dont move, I dont know how long I lay still.

  then here comes a truck and the driver gives me a ride so I end up in this place Gallup.

  Amanda stopped reading and glanced at Rhees. He was standing framed in the window, watching her with his head inclined slightly to one side. She picked up the letter and stepped through the kitchen and out into the backyard. Rhees followed her. They walked together to the swimming-pool. On the tiled bottom lay the corpse of a chlorinated frog, crouched and white. Clouds, stacked round the morning sun, were like smoke from a crematorium.

  She spread the letter in her lap. She didn’t want to read it again.

  then I get another ride to farmington – I phone the number you give me only nobody answers and I try the other number and there’s a man answers

  and I think maybe I better head back to phoenix and get to you.

  I steel this car outside a store

  then I see the two guys again.

  I drive fast as I can but theyre behind me all the time except when I lose them near this park where Im writing

  and then I see the guys again and this time its outside Tuba city.

  Amanda folded the pages. ‘I can imagine her driving around in this stolen car, remembering all the promises I made …’ She felt cold, like the edges of flu. The ice was in her bones and travelling. She gazed at the walls that bounded the yard and she thought, They wouldn’t keep anyone out, anyone determined enough to come after her. She imagined shapes in the shrubbery.

  She said, ‘Galindez decides he doesn’t want to participate, so he steps out of the van. The two escorts chase him and gun him down, and he’s swept away in the river. Why didn’t they just let him go? It’s his decision. It’s his choice. Why kill him?’

  Rhees said, ‘And because Isabel is a witness … what? She has to be killed too?’

  ‘But why shoot Galindez in the first place? These guys are US Marshals, for Christ’s sake. They’re supposed to protect witnesses and whisk them off to a bright new life, not kill them.’

  Rhees sat beside her and said, ‘It’s obvious they’re not Marshals. They carry fake documents and ID good enough to convince anybody that they’re charged with taking witnesses into protective custody, when in reality they’re people Sanchez has hired.’

  Cloud and sun, air heavy and lifeless. Amanda said, ‘Why would Sanchez’s people go through a charade like this? And why drive up into the boonies of Arizona? His hit men would do the job the first secluded place they came to.’

  What we gonna do with conchita? The sun was sucked again behind clouds. The day was intermittent dark and light. She thought about Sanchez. She remembered the strength of his body and the touch of his fingers against her mouth and the smell of toothpaste and bad things coming in threes. How the hell did he get access to the Program? Who did he pay?

  ‘You’re trembling,’ Rhees said.

  ‘I know. Maybe a bug.’

  ‘Let’s go back indoors.’

  Inside, she poured another shot of brandy. Booze on an empty stomach, like lighting a fuse. She needed a mega-infusion of vitamins and supplements, protein-shakes and immune-system boosters.

  ‘Call Dansk,’ Rhees said. ‘Give him the letter, let him deal with it. Let’s get the hell out of here and back to the cabin.’

  The cabin, right. She was picturing Sanchez in his cell. People from Justice come to interrogate him, Dansk among them. They probe him long and hard. He doesn’t have to tell them a goddam thing. He’s a dead man, he can say whatever the hell he likes. Go fuck yourselves, he tells them. And maybe Dansk asks something like Was your threat against Amanda Scholes serious? And Sanchez just says Eat shit and smiles with contempt.

  Rhees said, ‘Call Dansk, give him the letter.’ He picked up the telephone and held the receiver towards her.

  She didn’t take it from his hand.

  ‘Call him, for God’s sake. Arrange to deliver the letter. It’s outside your domain. It belongs in the hands of the proper authority.’

  Dansk. The proper authority. But Dansk was a stranger. He hadn’t spent hours in Isabel’s company the way she’d done, hadn’t listened to the brutal story of her marriage to Sanchez, hadn’t sat up at all hours comforting her, gently prompting her memory, sometimes embracing her while she cried tears of rage and fear.

  She’s still mine. She’s still my
business.

  Rhees continued to hold the phone towards her.

  She turned away. She walked inside the bathroom and shut the door. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and stuck Isabel’s letter in her hip pocket, swallowed a handful of capsules and tablets, catching the acrid scent of brewer’s yeast. Gimme strength. Help me think. She ran a brush through her hair. What we gonna do with conchita now? Kill her, what else?

  Kill Conchita.

  Rhees was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘I need my sneakers,’ and she edged past him. She found the sneakers, put them on and tied the laces. ‘I have to go out for a while, there’s something I want to check. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Let Dansk do the fucking checking. That’s what he’s here for. What is it with you? What is this need to fly solo?’

  She headed for the front door. She was already stepping into the car when she saw Rhees appear in the driveway. She backed out. He had a hand raised in the air, a gesture that meant stop, but she didn’t.

  She thought, John, try and understand me. You don’t belong in my world. She wasn’t even sure she belonged in it herself any more. She wasn’t sure if she still had the maps to it, if she understood the grids and interstices, or if she was rushing back in the direction of the same head-numbing sickness that had almost engulfed her before.

  She drove out of the cul-de-sac, thinking about the last words of Isabel’s letter.

  you know sumtin?

  this protection thing

  it just dont work

  33

  Dansk, in baseball cap and dark shades, picked up his cellular phone on the first ring and heard Pasquale say, ‘She just left.’

  Dansk said, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  He was parked outside a Taco Bell. He waited until the red VW appeared, then slid out of the parking-lot and cruised into traffic behind Amanda. The vehicle he drove was an anonymous Buick he’d picked up an hour ago from Budget. He believed in changing cars frequently as a matter of general strategy. He always went for mid-size cars in boring greys or dark blues with unmemorable wheels.