“Brendan, do you say everything that pops into your head?”
“I’m Irish. Chattiness is part of our charm.”
Andre likes his new assistant, really he does, though, yes, the kid talks too much. The past hour, the kid’s shared his whole life story. Graduated high school at sixteen. Earned his bachelor’s three years later. He spent last year studying in Dublin on a Fulbright, an experience that inspired the kid, who’s now twenty-two, to reclaim his Irish roots. The boy wonder started doctoral studies last fall, applied mathematics, but something interrupted those studies, compelled the kid to assume a voluntary one-year leave of absence. The kid gets sheepish talking about his leave, acts like an ex-con trying not to share the details of his crime. Andre doubts the obvious: cheating. Kid’s far too bright, too straitlaced for that. Maybe the kid mouthed off to the wrong professor; perhaps he seduced the department chair’s wife.
Brendan reaches behind his seat, retrieves a monogrammed cigarette case. The silver case, once opened, is empty except for a few flakes of tobacco. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”
“I don’t.” Andre discreetly sniffs the air, detects a hint of smoke. “Listen, I don’t care if you smoke, but I’m guessing the rental agreement forbids smoking inside the Jeep. Companies take that shit seriously.”
The two cruise across the next few miles in silence, the faint stench of smoke, now found, impossible to ignore.
* * *
The Carthage TravelMart, bright beneath stadium lights, is an island of roadside commerce, two paved acres surrounded by a sea of trees. At the island’s center sits a plaza, a tripartite complex that houses a gas station, pancake house, and liquor store. In front, a checkered lawn provides a retreat for travelers with children, a modest park with picnic tables, swing sets, and a fenced-in yard complete with a fire hydrant for the family dog.
“We’ve got another twenty miles.” Brendan steers the Jeep beside a pump. “The county’s pretty spread out.”
Andre decides to stretch his legs, and as he steps out of the Jeep, the cuffs of his pants dip into an iridescent puddle. The air here, thick yet cool, makes his suit stick against his chest, and he hopes that the final miles quickly pass. A day like this, without a moment’s rest, he needs a soft bed, perhaps a nightcap. What he wouldn’t give for the touch of a woman. The week he’s had, he thinks he deserves all three.
“Another pack of cowboy killers?” Andre says. Brendan reaches for his wallet, but Andre shakes his head. “I got it. You’re old enough to smoke, though, right?”
“You gonna quit making fun of my age?”
“Not till I find a better reason to mock you.”
Andre heads toward the plaza, passes a community bulletin board on which pastel flyers in bold fonts advertise guided fishing trips, evening Bible studies, spare bedrooms, and opportunities for army enlistment. One flyer, black italics on blue paper, promises fifty dollars for information about a missing, yet adorable, old woman, and Andre wonders whether this woman’s family is poor, cheap, or indifferent to her actual return.
Inside the liquor store, music plays over the loudspeakers, a boy band trying to cover Motown, the soul gone, replaced by a rockabilly beat. The shop is a warehouse of booze, pallet upon pallet of beer, wine, spirits: all prices, all brands, for all tastes. He wants to buy a bottle—maybe he’ll buy two—but decides against it. Their first day together, he doesn’t need Brendan wondering whether the boss is a lush.
The doughy cashier meets Andre’s eye and blanches. She drops her face, slips her hand beneath the counter. He knows what she’s thinking—This black man’s here to rob us—and Andre knows exactly how to handle this. Indeed, every brother in America knows how to handle this. Flash a warm smile, show your empty hands, and pray this terrified white girl isn’t gripping a Glock.
“My friend, the blond guy out there, he’s buying gas.” He uses his least threatening tone, gestures softly toward Brendan. “It’s okay to use your restroom?” The cashier glances over her shoulder and relaxes.
“Oh sure. Go on ahead, mister.” She sets her hands atop the cork countertop and smiles as though nothing has passed between them. “Help yourself. Y’all don’t have to buy nothing, but the diner starts sellin’ day-old donuts soon. The maple frosted, I promise you, mister, they’re a little piece of wonderful.”
“I like maple frosted.” He doesn’t, but if favoring syrupy treats prevents this white girl from shooting him full of holes, then he’s pleased to change his taste. “Bathroom’s in the back?”
“Next to the audiobooks.”
The bathroom is, in fact, a locker room: benches, toilets, showers. In one shower stall, a tall man sings. In another, a short man whistles. The bank of sinks, well lit and immaculate, smells like aftershave, and a raven placard above the fogged mirror warns, in big bone-white text: LEWD CONDUCT IS A FELONY PUNISHABLE BY JAIL, FINES, AND PUBLIC RIDICULE.
Andre splashes cloudy water on his face, notices a dispenser that sells temporary tattoos. The tattoos, two for a quarter, cost far less than he remembers. But he hasn’t worn a temporary tattoo in years, not since he ferried bindles across Southeast. The bindles, aluminum packets the size of his thumbnail, fitted easily inside the tongues of his Velcro shoes. He had thought he was clever, a teardrop tattoo on his face, a Japanese symbol on his arms, distinctive physical characteristics that he could erase if anything went wrong. In those days, he thought he was so damn smart. Smarter than the cops. Smarter than the junkies. No way anyone could touch him. In hindsight, he regrets much about that life. Sure, he enjoyed the thrills of small-time dealing. Try to find a fifteen-year-old dropout who wouldn’t. But now, washing his hands in the sink, he counts himself lucky that he’s not rotting in some potter’s field.
He leaves the men’s room, follows a row of refrigerators that keep cool beer, wine, strawberry milk. He wants bottled water. Tomorrow, he fears, will bring a hangover. Maybe next time he shouldn’t drink so much on the plane, but then again he thought that the last time he flew. In one refrigerator, on a shelf beneath jugs of water, white cartons of live bait, each labeled by hand, are stacked like bricks of snow. Nightcrawlers, crickets, maggots, and sand fleas. He closes the door, empty handed, repulsed by the proximity of beverage and bait.
At the checkout counter, a security camera records the cashier flirting with Brendan. She preens her hair, bats her eyes, covers her mouth to laugh. Brendan, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a maple-frosted donut in the other, seems to enjoy the attention.
“Andre, buddy,” Brendan says. “Try these donuts. They’re a little piece of . . . what did you say?”
“Piece of wonderful.” The cashier glows. “Where y’all from?”
“What makes you think we’re not from here?” Brendan radiates a confidence and cheerfulness, both of which irritate Andre.
“Your friend here, his suit’s too nice.” She points toward Andre, then lets her eyes drift back to Brendan. “And you, you don’t look like folks around here. I’d remember you.”
“We’re just passing through.” Andre picks a postcard—Carthage County, a Sportsman’s Paradise. “Do you have stamps?”
“My uncle owns a hunting lodge, if you’re interested.” She tugs her hair. “Five hundred acres. Private land. It’s very luxurious. Very classy. Great price.”
“Stamps?” Andre says.
“Sold out.” She tears a napkin, finds a purple pen. “Here’s my uncle’s number. And here’s mine too. Just in case.”
She scribbles digits in sparkling ink, slips the napkin into Brendan’s palm.
“We gotta go.” Andre plunks down a dollar, catches Brendan’s eye. “Now.”
A mustached man, sporting fatigues and a safety vest, stands outside the entrance and holds open the door. Andre thanks the hunter, finds himself beside the man’s idling pickup, a sleeping hound in its cab, a kill in its bed. Andre doesn’t know the difference between a wolf and a coyote—one is larger, he assumes—but this
creature, no matter its size, is impaled by two feathered arrows, one beneath the throat, the other between the ribs. In thirty-five years, Andre’s never seen dead wildlife. Not really. Not up close. In Washington, he’s seen his share of belly-up pigeons, feral cats stiffer than a prison cot. Once, in Northeast, he witnessed a paddy wagon flatten a corner girl’s iguana. But here, inches away, this creature looks peaceful, silver fur soaking up its own black blood.
“Isn’t that gorgeous?” Brendan says. “How big is she?”
A bolt of irritation strikes Andre. Is Brendan really starting yet another conversation with yet another stranger? Now? An hour past midnight?
“Twenty-eight pounds,” the hunter says. “Took an hour to track her.”
Andre wonders what the hunter means. Track her? Did an hour pass between the first arrow and the second, or did an hour pass between spotting and killing the prey? He wants to ask for how long this poor creature suffered, but he bites his tongue. Because even if it weren’t the middle of the night, and even if Andre weren’t trying to keep a low profile, and even if the airline scotch weren’t wearing off, even then, this animal would still be dead, a fact that he’s powerless to change.
“What kind of wolf is this?” Brendan asks.
“It’s a coyote, actually.” The hunter runs his hand along the spine of his prey. “We got a huge coyote problem here. Damn beasts almost ruined the turkey stock last year. If y’all are looking for guides . . .”
“We’re just passing through.” Andre tugs Brendan’s sleeve. “We should be going.”
Andre retraces his steps, passing the swings and picnic tables and fire hydrant. Fifteen minutes he’s been in Carthage, and already he hates this place.
“Everyone here’s so nice.” Brendan starts the engine, glances at Andre. “Something wrong?”
“We’re not candidates. We don’t shake hands. We don’t kiss babies. We work best when no one knows . . .” Andre realizes that he’s tired, that he’s had a terrible day. He doesn’t want to whip the kid with his frustration. “Listen, this is a small community. Twenty-eight thousand people. You never know who’s paying attention. For all we know, that guy, or the gal working the register—”
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Do you know who opposes the gold mines? Everyone. Hunters and hunting lodges will hate the idea of losing a thousand acres of public hunting land. The sport fishermen won’t appreciate the runoff. That’s to say nothing of terrified parents who fear millions of gallons of cyanide seeping into their children’s drinking water.” Andre takes a breath. “Soon enough, people might notice someone’s running an anonymous campaign, and the first person they’ll suspect—”
“The new guys asking a bunch of questions.” A series of panicked expressions chase each other across Brendan’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“Keep your head down, your eyes open, your mouth shut,” Andre says. “You’re not here to make friends.”
“Head down. Eyes open. Mouth shut.” Brendan mumbles the phrase, once, twice, three times, as though each time the words are new. “I need to be more careful. I’ll do better. Seriously, Mr. Ross, I’ll do better. I will. I will. I will!”
* * *
Andre has an ongoing feud with Alenushka Romanov. Alenushka, a Russian naturalized citizen, works the desk at the firm’s travel office, her duties including booking tickets, calculating per diems, and monitoring use of the company credit cards. When teams hit the road for lengthy, faraway campaigns, she scours the Internet for houses that the firm could lease, a cost-saving alternative to renting each employee an individual hotel suite. She has a reputation both as a thoughtful steward of the firm’s finances and as a bureaucrat who plays favorites, bestowing upon her closest friends first-class accommodations. And because she possesses this power to grant comforts, staffers compete for her favor: flattery; gifts; inquiries about her son, Daniil, a high school swimming sensation. She enjoys sharing pictures, the pale, sinewy boy in swim caps and briefs, brags that one day Daniil will medal in the Olympics.
Once each year, she takes up a collection, donations to help finance her son’s latest international competition. Toronto and Tokyo, Sochi and Rio. Daniil’s traveled the globe, each trip financed through his mother’s old-school strong-arm shakedown. Most people quietly complain, but everyone pays. Junior associates give one hundred dollars; senior associates give twice as much. Shit, even Mrs. Fitz antes up; last year she gave a solid grand. Andre knows the game, each year writing a check, but this year, he forgot; between work and Hector and the breakup with his girl, he failed to meet Alenushka’s deadline, an oversight he didn’t realize until she denied his request for reimbursement for a client dinner. He assumed he’d eat this one expense, that this cost would teach him his lesson, but now, standing on the veranda of a broken-down Victorian gothic, replete with gargoyles and turret, a house that surely should be condemned, Andre understands that Alenushka still holds a grudge. “We’re staying at an abandoned funeral home?”
“Funeral home and taxidermist.” Brendan fumbles the keys that unlock the front door’s three dead bolts. The porch, bowed planks beneath their feet, smells of rot. The only light is from the full moon and the glow of a bug zapper. Andre can’t see much, but he can make out shapes, filled garbage bags against the rail, and beside the front step, a water heater inside a clawfoot tub. Brendan says, “This used to be the whites-only funeral home. You know, back in the segregated days. African Americans weren’t allowed inside.”
“And who says Jim Crow was all bad?” Andre feels a gnat fly into his mouth and, without thinking, swallows. He spits, though it’s too late for that, swats the swarm circling his face. “Did these gnats follow us from the Jeep?”
“I think we’ve been walking through one continuous swarm.”
Andre glances over his shoulder, catches a shadow, perhaps a rabbit or raccoon, scurrying across the lawn. He estimates fifty-five feet between the porch and the pebbled drive. A continuous swarm of gnats? Well played, Alenushka. He steels himself for whatever’s inside. No matter what he sees, he knows he’s survived far worse. For most of his childhood, his family moved around. By his twelfth birthday, Andre and Hector and their mother must have lived in a dozen different homes, the most luxurious of which could have generously been described as a slum. More than once, they had no home at all. His social worker in juvie called his life peripatetic, a word he did not know and assumed was fancy white-people speak for pathetic. He cursed his social worker out, threatened to beat her ass, a threat that got him thirty days in seg, which, he now thinks, may have been better accommodations than this Victorian shithole.
“The house has four levels.” Brendan opens the door. “The embalming room is downstairs in the basement. That’s mostly storage now. Then, there’s this floor. The living quarters are upstairs on the second floor, and the attic’s above that. I haven’t been in the attic yet.”
“Don’t bother.” Andre grips his luggage. “It’s where they keep the ghosts.”
Brendan flicks a switch, and the vestibule comes into view. Dangling from a live wire, a single bulb flickers above a stack of soiled mattresses. At once, Andre recognizes, swept into a corner, the mark of junkies: broken vials, used Band-Aids, ash-tipped matches in dove-shaped ashtrays. He’s surprised by the absence of rusty syringes, but maybe Brendan’s cleared away the best evidence. He wonders what caused the junkies to leave, then wonders whether they plan to return. This house seems too perfect to simply abandon: hidden deep behind a stand of black willows, far from the country road, not a neighbor for three miles.
“I started cleaning yesterday, when I got here,” Brendan says, seemingly not in search of praise, but as an excuse to say, I can do better given more time. “I concentrated on the apartment upstairs. And, you know, getting rid of the smell.”
Brendan pushes forward, passing beneath an archway, and flicks another switch. The viewing room is small and square, with walls stained by graffiti and shotgun s
pray. A lone dusty pew faces a felt-topped altar, and an exposed overhead pipe drips into a champagne chiller. Andre doesn’t have much experience with funerals; in his entire life, he’s attended only two. Last year, a senior associate drove his Ford Fusion into the Potomac after failing to make junior partner. Six years ago, Mrs. Fitz’s second husband died of colorectal cancer. He didn’t know either man particularly well, and he realizes that one day he will attend his brother’s. A soft sigh escapes his lips. He imagines standing in the shadow of Hector’s casket, imagines the loneliness of losing his only kin. He knows that few mourners will attend. The brothers didn’t keep many friends, and the ones they did are now missing, imprisoned, or dead. Maybe Mrs. Fitz and their mother will pay their respects. Maybe Cassie will too. Every person Andre’s ever loved fitting in half a pew.
“Our hardware is supposed to arrive tomorrow afternoon.” Brendan opens a side door that leads to a tomblike hall. “I was thinking we might set up shop on this level. Lots of room for monitors and maps. Plenty of workspace.”
“That’s thirty grand worth of equipment, and this floor doesn’t look secure. Or dry. Maybe the attic. Higher floors might give us better access to the satellites.” Andre spins around. “She really put us in an abandoned funeral home?”
Brendan leads the way down the hall. A wolf. A bear. A mountain-lion cub. Mounted heads decorate the walls. Andre expects at least one face to show surprise, but instead, each shows aggression, curled lips revealing hind teeth as though each beast expected to win this one last fight.
The hall ends beside a curved staircase missing a rail. To Andre, the bottom stair feels infirm, and for the first time, he questions his own safety. In thirty-five years, he’s survived one manipulative, mentally ill mother; two years’ imprisonment; and three Democratic national conventions. Wouldn’t it be a shame to die here, neck broken after falling through a flimsy floor? So he ascends the staircase quickly, a step behind Brendan, avoids placing too much weight on any one step, until, at last, they reach a platform that also threatens collapse.
The Coyotes of Carthage Page 3
