“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt a wave of sadness. “He was a good dog.”
Carl shrugged. Loss wasn’t his thing. Causing it, or experiencing it. Grief rolled off his back like a Colorado monsoon would stream off the hood of his Chrysler.
“I always thought the little guy was kind of fey.” He was talking about Anvil, and dismissing his demise. “I’m out doing a grand tour,” he explained. “A few years back I got the leukemia,” he said. “The AML. Acute myo … log-ness leukemia.” He mangled the second word. He knew he’d given it a good try and he knew he mangled it. “I call it the killing-you-softly kind of leukemia. Takes its fucking time. They knocked it down with chemo. Now, to keep me going? They give me other people’s blood? Irony? You bet.
“My grandkids tell me that the transfusions make me a vampire. They call me ‘Vamp Gramp.’ Fucking kids.” He laughed.
I felt a need to redirect the conversation. “How are you holding up?”
“Good. They keep telling me someday soon I won’t be so good. But one doctor—a young girl, too young to be a doctor, but I like her—she thinks my lungs will kill me before the AML does.” He shrugged. “If I was a betting man—what the hell, I am a betting man—I would lay ten grand even-up on a bullet or a blade.” He laughed.
“But until something or somebody does me in I get to pretend I got nothing to lose. After the life I’ve lived I’m playing on house money. Before the last days tick by, whenever that is, I got some old acquaintances to see. You. You’re one of those.”
I think he wanted me to thank him. I didn’t.
“Like my car?” he asked.
“Love your car,” I said. “It’s you. Classic, but with a … sneer to it.” I meant it as a compliment. He took it that way. I put my open hand on my heart. “It’s good to see you, Carl.”
“I’ve been checking you on the Bing,” he said. “My daughter gave me one of those iPads. Old dog, new trick? I never got good with the computers. The booting, the rebooting, the left clicking, the right clicking. But the iPad? It’s okay. My fingers are fat. Every day comes a point I want to fling the thing out the window like a Frisbee because my fingers are fat, but mostly I like it. I like the Bing a lot. My daughter showed me how it can help me remember stuff. That’s not my best thing no more. The Bing remembers for me. I don’t know how it does that, but I don’t fucking care, either. I tell it, like, I want to know about you going forward, into the future. It does that, then it tells me when something comes around.
“The Bing told me about your recent troubles.”
Carl examined my face for a tell. I didn’t think he saw anything. I sucked at poker—playing the odds wasn’t my strength—but I was okay at poker faces.
“Anyway. On the tube part, the Bing tube? The one that plays the home movies? Crazy shit. Cats? So many cats. And the Koreans? Don’t get me started on the Koreans. Anyway, that’s where I saw your little girl dancing. Broke my heart, I tell ya. Sorry for your loss.”
He recited those last words as though they were a prayer from someone else’s religion. Along the way Carl had learned that loss touched others.
In movies, and in life, people often mix up the traits of sociopaths and psychopaths. In my mind, the simplest distinction is that the sociopath doesn’t care. The psychopath doesn’t even know.
Carl knew. I weighed the likelihood that Carl was actually sorry for my loss. If it were true that Frank was currently living somewhere north of absolute sociopathy and south of rank psychopathy, then it was possible that I was the best psychotherapist in the world. Unlikely, but whatever. I chose to be touched by Carl’s sentiment. Or his pretended sentiment. Which was true in the moment didn’t matter. I thanked him.
“But,” he said, “if you had to dance to eat you’d be one skinny dead man. Just saying. Case you had any illusions about your abilities.”
I laughed.
“She was pregnant last time I was here,” he reminded me. “The dead wife. With the little dancing girl? It was that long ago?”
The dead wife. Carl’s words made me shudder. They were a stark reminder about his comfort with the states of being and not being. I would never forget the details of the life he’d lived, how he’d dug his first grave—dug his first literal grave and then dug his second—before he had attended his First Communion. How he had killed a man with his own hands months before the day he stood for his confirmation.
That first confession must have been something to hear. Carl had lived a life that, were I to deign to offer judgment, I would need to judge from way beyond a horizon. It was that far out of my experience.
I didn’t judge him. I feared him. “Yes, with the girl. It was that long ago.”
“Back then I told you I owed you one.” He shrugged. “A favor. I’m at a place in my life where I’m eager to settle the debt. It will help me die in peace if I don’t leave markers behind. You know what I’m saying?”
He looked around. It was reflex for him to be certain we were alone.
That I knew what he was saying gave me gooseflesh in places I didn’t know I could get gooseflesh. During therapy with Carl I had learned that nuance wasn’t a helpful strategy. When I wanted to be sure he heard me, simple declarative sentences worked best. I said, “You don’t owe me, Carl.”
He said, “I be the judge of that.” He leaned forward a little, which made him small and hard, like a fighter coiling up to absorb a few quick shots, or like a cannonball atop a pile of other cannonballs, all potential energy. The cannonball in front of me had a lot more ear and nostril hair than I recalled.
“Tell me about the shoot,” he said. “What happened, ’zactly.”
I assumed he was talking about the shoot he read about online. On the Bing. I told him about Diane shooting Lauren without having to mince words, or protect anyone’s feelings—Carl knew none of the players.
“Your friend then? The shooter? She lost it?”
“Yeah. It seems.”
“Seems? No payback with her?”
I shook my head. “She snapped, Carl. I can only live with what happened if I believe that to be true.”
“You’re choosing what to believe? That’s different from knowing. I seen people die believing like that. Not knowing, but believing.”
“I guess I am choosing to believe. Can you relate to that?”
“Never seen it work, not a single time.” He rolled his neck this way and that. I heard cracks. “In case you’re wondering, the favor I owe doesn’t expire until I do.” He laughed. “If you change your mind, if things develop in ways that cause you to adjust your beliefs, make you less certain about your friend’s motives. And maybe less confident about justice because justice is a capricious fucking bitch.” Frank’s pronunciation of capricious was closer to capiche-ee-us—an intentional amalgamation of the Italian-American and the highfalutin two-bit English.
“There are always things that can be done. People can be influenced. Solutions found. That was my specialty back when. Solutions.” He popped his chest forward with confidence as he spoke of his previous life. Carl’s solutions meant threats would be made. Or knives would be plunged. Triggers would be pulled. Garrotes tautened.
Jaws would be clamped. He tapped his watch. It was a fat gold Rolex. Real? Fake? Either was possible with Carl Luppo.
The only thing that wasn’t possible was that he had paid retail.
16
I WALKED HIM TO HIS car. “You need a place to spend the night? You’re welcome here. I have a guest room.”
I felt obligated to make the offer, but I had no idea what I would do if Carl accepted. I would probably put the kids on a late flight to go see their sister in Holland. Charter a Gulfstream to get them out of town fast if I had to.
Carl’s past choices meant he went through life with a target painted on his chest. Fate and guile and cruelty, all his, dictated that he’d survived.
Plus some luck. Carl’s eyes, I thought, were as cold as facts. He said, “Truth?” The word c
ame out more like troot. “I bring danger with me. Not fair to your family. I’ll be in Denver tonight at the Four Seasons. I like the Four Seasons. Stay with them whenever I can. They treat me like I’m important.”
“You’ll be there for the holiday?”
“Who knows? I may itch for the road again tomorrow. New Year’s Eve used to mean family early, hookers late. Now? Can always find a hooker. The Bing.”
Okay. “Four Seasons means you must have some money.”
“God gives. I pray that God forgives, too. The Lotto? The Powerball? I play. Used to be the numbers. Always I play. Even inside I played. Match three all the time. Like, regular, more than my share. Have me a knack. Few times, four. Then a year or so back? When there was that big jackpot. Remember? The gazillion dollar one? I matched all five regular numbers, but not the fucking Powerball. I missed that fuck by a mile. I hate the fucking Powerball.
“Still, five matches on a big jackpot was a lot of dough for a guy with a short calendar. A guy like me with the AML.” He lowered his voice. “Split it with my kids and grandkids. Left me with one hundred sixty-two large after taxes. Used some to get me the car.” He laughed. “I’m leasing it, bettin’ I never make that last payment? Suckers.
“I’ve always wanted to take a long road trip. One I wasn’t forced to take. Never had that freedom. I’m seeing me a lot of Four Seasons.”
“Can I get in? See your car?”
“Be my guest. She’s gorgeous.”
Through the windshield I saw Sam standing with his hands in his pockets on the cedar deck of Ophelia’s doublewide. He was staring at the big nose of the Chrysler.
Carl saw Sam, too. Carl’s nose twitched like he was a predator and Sam was a veal chop. Carl said, “Your neighbor’s a cop.”
He had certain instincts. I said, “He’s okay. He’s a friend.”
Carl stared at Sam the way I eye coyotes that pause across the canyon. Warily.
“The one from that night? The big fight? He came late to the party.”
“Yes. But he’s forgiven. He wasn’t invited to that party.”
“I remember.”
Changing the subject seemed prudent. “Your daughter gave you the iPad. You gave the kids the gift of some serious money. So you must be talking with your children again?” Carl had long been estranged from his family. I said, “That’s a good thing?”
He smiled as he put a closed fist on his heart. “A blessing.” He glanced in the mirrors reflexively. Rearview, then sideview. Then the other sideview. Even in the wilds of Boulder County at the butt end of a dirt road on a promontory with a view of a hundred miles, while expressing love for his family, Carl couldn’t feel safe.
He checked the mirrors again. Some bruises don’t heal.
The quiet between us extended for a while.
I didn’t know it, but jeopardy, different for each of us, and gravity, the same for each of us, were conspiring to pull us the same way as our quiet filled the car.
He busted the silence. He said, “Huh. I can tell I’m not even asking you about the right problem.”
It wasn’t a question. Nor was it something that Carl could have learned on the Bing. Carl knew I had another problem because the man could smell trepidation like he could smell a fruit seller’s fresh peaches from a half block away on a quaint via in Naples in July.
“There’s this guy named Michael McClelland,” I said.
For me it was watching Carl check the mirrors, and check them again, and then again, that had moved me to speak about my problem with McClelland. Watching Carl’s paranoia showed me my future if I didn’t find a way to stop McClelland.
I was close to acknowledging that I was too exhausted to face that future. Too careless a guy for the vigilance it would require to protect my flanks, and my kids. I knew I didn’t have Carl’s memory for faces. I didn’t have his heart for the long game.
I didn’t have his immunity against the virus of loss. Not at all.
“So how can I be of help?” Carl said.
He laughed. I laughed, too. As his therapist, I’d once said the same words to him. He’d remembered my opening line from our first session: How can I be of help?
“Well played,” I said.
“Without a good memory I’m a dead man twenty years ago. Thirty maybe.” He laughed. “Forty.”
It took me ten minutes to tell him the highlights of the story of Michael McClelland.
When I was done, he said, “Couple things? Your ethics? Got you into this mess. Forget them. This Mike guy? You got yourself a whatchamacallit, a … a nemesis.”
“I do. And I don’t know how to stop him. He’s got reach. He’s determined. He’s patient. He’s brilliant. Smarter than me. Smarter than anybody I know.”
“Smart has limits,” Carl said. “Never met a guy smarter than a bullet.”
Or a shiv. I had dreams, literal dreams, that Michael’s end would involve a shiv.
I said, “For the longest time I thought he wanted to kill me, that he spent his waking hours planning how he would do it. Now? I think what he wants is to ruin my life, make me sorry every day that I’m still breathing.”
Carl powered down his window and spit into the dirt. It was an editorial expectoration. He brought the window back up. “We never worked that way. Might kill somebody one day, take care of his family the next. You know, make sure they got an envelope. If they knew what happened, they might have cursed, thrown it back in our face. But after we left, they’d pick it up. Move on.
“What we did in those days was about business, not about causing suffering.” He considered his words. “Not for the family anyway.”
Carl caused a little suffering on the edges. He was okay with that.
“He’s in prison,” I said. “McClelland.”
“In the pen?” I nodded. “Federal or state? Which one?” I told him.
“Can be more complicated, but I got some reach, too,” Carl said. Carl had done hard time. He knew all about reaching over the walls and through the bars.
“Yeah? Not hard to do?”
“Not too hard,” he said with the kind of offhanded confidence that a cold-blooded killer brings to the type of conversation we were having.
“My guy is easy to find,” I said. “Looking on the bright side of his incarceration.”
Carl laughed. “Sometimes, so you know, reaching inside from outside is a little more complicated than reaching outside from inside.”
I said, “What we’re discussing? No decision has been made. That has to be clear, too. To you.” He nodded. “I mean it. We talk again. Before?”
“Yes.”
“Promise me.”
“You got my word, Doc.”
“Thank you. I trust your word.”
He touched his heart with his fist again. I decided it was an affirmation of something good. Or, given whom I was talking with, at least something I could live with.
“Are you visiting Kirsten while you’re in town?” I asked. Kirsten Lord had been another of my WITSEC patients. A protected prosecutor. Carl had figured that fact out without too much effort. He had tried to befriend her. And more.
He tried not to smile at my question about Kirsten. He failed. The mention of her name put a glow in his eyes that even a hardened wiseguy couldn’t disguise.
A little gorilla in his tone, he asked, “What makes you think that?”
Because you fell in love with her, I thought. Stopping by to see a woman like her is the kind of reminiscing an old man does when he has a fancy new car, ample free time, a wallet full of Powerball Benjamins, a suite at the Four Seasons, and, especially, when the AML roulette wheel has his number and he’s just hanging out waiting for the day the thing stops spinning.
“Have you spoken with her already?” I asked.
“We’ll see. She’s on my list. Old friends. Like I said.”
“Did she send you here? Did she tell you I needed your help?”
“Don’t know anything about that,” he sa
id. “Nothin’.”
I grinned at him. “Your memory? It’s not suddenly failing you, is it?”
Carl thrust his jaw my way. He didn’t want to lie to my face. Me and Carl? We had a history. He said, “I’m an old man. The only parts that aren’t failing me are the parts that have already failed me.” He pointed at his dick.
The gesture was funny. But my self-preservation instincts kicked in. I didn’t laugh.
He explained, “These days I need to see Alice if I want to enjoy myself.”
“Alice? You have a girlfriend?”
“Alice?” Carl laughed. “Nah-nah, da Cialis, the pill.”
I got out of the Chrysler. Before he drove away he lowered his window, reached into his pocket, and pulled something out. He held it out to me, whatever it was invisible in his meaty hand.
I thought he was giving me a candy. Or one of his Cialis. I was wrong.
“Powerball. A ten-pack. I try to spread the luck, you know? Keep an eye out for the drawing. Good fortune. Yeah?”
I faced north until the dust he stirred up as he drove away completely settled.
I felt heavy. I had just arranged to—maybe—arrange a hit with a hit man.
I felt bad that I didn’t feel worse.
The first snowflakes began to fall.
17
AS THE FLURRIES MINGLED with the dust from the lane behind Carl’s departing car I wondered if the timing of his visit had been coincidence, or if it had been precipitated by a conversation he had with Kirsten. My gut was insisting that Carl had phoned Kirsten with an update as he was driving away.
When I turned to walk back to the house, Sam was approaching from Ophelia’s.
He said, “Do I know him? Your visitor? In the black car.”
“That one? Just now?” I said, as though there had been a parade of black cars carrying visitors down the lane and Sam and I needed to select one from the fleet.
I didn’t want to get into it with Sam. I was confident that he’d recognized the visitor as the protected witness with the WITSEC name of Carl Luppo with whom Sam once crossed paths. Sam’s cop memory for faces was at least as good as Carl’s criminal memory for faces. I told myself that Sam’s curiosity wasn’t complicated; he was just being a detective. But I was suspicious anyway. Because I had grown suspicious of Sam.
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