The Hidden Man

by Anthony Flacco

  As far as experience had taught her, any man who was given the chance would lunge for her on any pretext, hands grabbing for her face and body. They sometimes descended like flies, either because she was pretty and petite, or because she was a youthful-looking nineteen and appeared to be easy prey.

  So much of her love for Shane and Randall was heightened by her gratitude and amazement that after nine years together, both men had always accepted her story about her shared lineage with Shane. She said that she was his sister, so that was enough for them. And from that moment on, they treated her accordingly in every way.

  It was a mystery to her; Vignette had no other experience for comparison. Her own sexual innocence was gone long before her body had matured. She was forced to learn about feminine wiles and male gratification as a matter of her survival, back when the so-called friars at the orphanage still got away with things like that because she was only “Mary Kathleen,” and that little girl lacked the skills to move things around well enough to keep herself protected.

  By the time she renamed herself and fled for the streets, her innocence had melted within the corrosive atmosphere of the place. The authority figures who did it to her had always carefully explained why their actions were all her own fault, for arousing their desire.

  Nine years earlier, the first time it hit her that she and Shane and Randall were actually going to move in together, she felt the beginnings of a slow panic. How was it possible to survive being alone in the close company of two males? The question burned in the pit of her stomach, a sort of vigil fire, while she waited for the betrayal that was sure to follow. She never went so far as to sleep with a knife under her pillow, but it took the first couple of years for the one in the back of her mind to dissolve away.

  She had no idea what particular part of their brains these two men were using that she had never witnessed anywhere else, but she had seen its effect. Her knowledge of it was thicker than water. That knowledge also presented the main quandary of her life, because it did not permit her to loathe and despise men. Otherwise that would have come to her as naturally as breathing.

  And then there it was: another example, right there, when Shane released her, stepped back, and grabbed her by the jawline. He playfully squeezed her face. Then he pushed her away with a gentle shove, turned around, and walked out without having said a word.

  It took another hour or so before Randall Blackburn peeked around the door frame to the living room and spotted Vignette sitting in a darkened corner. He walked on in and stepped over to the gas fireplace.

  “Hi. Why don’t you come on over and have a seat by the fire?”

  “I like it in the shadows, right now.”

  “Good enough, if you’re happy there. I’ll just sit here where I can poke up the flames.” He smiled at the little joke while he scooted closer to the gas fireplace. Vignette did not react. “Shane went to bed?”

  She spoke up from her place in the shadows, without looking up. “Yes.”

  He pantomimed poking at the fire with a stick, smiled at her, then stopped poking and stopped smiling. “Well then, uh, I’m glad you waited up.”

  “It’s not as if I had a choice or something.”

  “What?”

  “Stop it, Randall! I can tell she said something. I know she did. She’s like that. She broke the news to me that they had found me out, because the police told her when they came to put in that damned telephone thing. She wanted me to be the one to tell you, at least that’s what she said. Except she had to go and do it herself. I was supposed to tell you!”

  “Vignette, Miss Freshell hasn’t told me anything. And the police didn’t tell her anything, either.”

  “And you still call her ‘Miss Freshell,’ Randall, putting her up on a pedestal!”

  “Just because I show her respect—this conversation is not about her.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Freshell.”

  “Ah.

  “Who is still not the topic.”

  “No, right now, the topic is who told you.”

  “Captain Merced told me. Tonight, at the theatre, during the show. Not that it matters.”

  “…oh.”

  He sat still after that, staring into the fireplace, waiting for her. Eventually, she found her voice.

  “You can think it through all you want. Doesn’t matter. Nothing changes. And nothing changes because it’s so simple.”

  “What’s simple?”

  “That there’s nothing out there for me, Randall. There never was and it never changes.”

  “All right. I know you say that, Vignette, but—”

  “There’s nothing out there for me! And so there’s nothing wrong with me staying here and not being in any hurry to go be a spinster somewhere.”

  “Don’t use that stupid word. You’re far too young for it. Even if you were twice your age, it would still be a stupid word.”

  “And I am sure as hell not anybody’s wife, not anybody’s mother. How do words like that fit me? Can you see me doing that?”

  “Not right now, maybe, but you’re still young.”

  “So how long does it take until you know?”

  “…Don’t ask me. But you don’t want to wait as long as I did, Vignette. I mean, I’ve been single ever since I lost…that was too many years ago. You can look at me and see that, can’t you?”

  “No I can’t, in fact. What’s wrong with it? Our lives are good, just like they are. Far as I’m concerned.”

  “Yes. But things change. In life.” He groaned to himself. Things change in life? If he had already reduced himself to saying something like that, he was in cold, deep water.

  He tried again. “You understand, though, right? After a while…I think, whoever you are, after a while, you don’t want to be alone.”

  She took a deep breath, then shook her head. “You, maybe. I think that it’s about the only thing that will work for me.”

  “Vignette, here it is: You can’t go into any of the precinct houses. You can’t go into the City Hall Station, anymore. Not for a year or so, anyway. Maybe longer. It depends on how long it takes for this to be forgotten. And the men who run an organization like this, the thing they fear the most is looking weak. In their minds, for a young woman to beat them at their own game by fooling them like you did, it makes them look ridiculous.”

  “I don’t even know those particular fellows, and I can’t see how they can take personal offense.”

  “I just told you how. And what you think, what I think, it just doesn’t matter. They react automatically to something like this, like swatting a fly. The important thing now is for us to make sure that these men don’t notice you for a while. We don’t want them to think about you at all.”

  “I swear, Randall, if I had to stay home and keep house for some man just because he stuck a ring on my finger, I’d go insane. How do the wives avoid suicide?”

  “The police, Vignette, I’m talking to you about the police. Now the thing that you have going for you in this is the fact that they want to hush it all up. Women aren’t supposed to be able to do what you were doing, and apparently doing quite well. And right now, the city is so conscious of its civic image that they just want it all to go away. You’re in luck.”

  “I didn’t know a city could feel things.”

  “I mean the people I work for.”

  “They’re not going to take this out on you, are they?”

  “What, on me? Why would they do that?”

  “Right. I know. So they won’t do it then?”

  “Don’t you worry about me. Let’s talk about what you’re going to do with yourself, with your life.”

  “Oh. Well, I can get married. Or be a spinster schoolteacher. Or a spinster librarian. Or maybe even a spinster retail clerk! Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Vignette!” he was loud, nearly shouting. Randall never shouted at her. It immediately got her attention. When she finally raised her eyes to meet his gaze, she was surprise
d to see more pain in him than she felt herself.

  “I have to be able to trust you, Vignette.”

  “But…You can, though. You still can. Regardless.”

  “Police training?”

  “Sometimes I could explode, Randall! I swear I could! None of the roads ahead of me are going to anywhere that I need to be. Not even anywhere I can stand to think of being.”

  “Regardless. The three of us only have each other as long as there is that trust.”

  “You and Shane can trust me.”

  “We can. Except when you decide that you need to do something like this.”

  Vignette sighed, dropped her head into her hands, and silently rocked from side to side.

  “I know you have to live on your own terms. But I hate to see you rely on your money like that.”

  “Randall, if I keep my life simple, I can live off of that investment for years and years. And all of that time, I won’t have to cram myself into somebody else’s little world.”

  “That’s good. But what I’m afraid of is that at some point the money runs out or the investment goes bad, and if that happens, you’ll be stuck out there on your own without any decent skills.”

  “I can do all kinds of things, as far as working at a job, Randall. I just can’t stomach the way that they’ll treat me. And I don’t care if it’s the same way that they treat the other women. Those damned women seem like a herd of cows to me.”

  “So it’s not a pointless job that you’re afraid of having to endure?”

  “Hell no. It’s that I’ll be expected to endure it without getting into fights with morons. How am I supposed to do that?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, well, when you put it that way…”

  “How much did they tell you about me?”

  “Just whatever they found out when the tip came in. They only got it late this morning. What did you do about your hair?”

  Vignette removed the wig. Her hair was shorter than Shane’s. Still, he could hardly believe that this face had deceived so many men through several days of testing. It seemed to him that her pixie features were accented by the short hair. She must have clinched the male illusion with sheer attitude.

  Blackburn had not lived with this person for the past nine years without learning something about how to coexist with a young female. This one was an actress, first of all. He knew the proper response.

  “Well I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a woman wear her hair that short, but you know, you really make it look good.”

  She stared at him with a faint smile. Finally, she stood up and walked over to him, put her arms around him, and then just stayed there.

  “I’m sorry, Randall,” she finally said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “I never thought it through. I was in it before I knew it. And then it just seemed like I had to keep it up. It was like being caught in fast water.”

  “All right, then. I’m thankful you didn’t get hurt.”

  “Hurt somebody else, you mean.” She gave him a tiny grin.

  He laughed. “Just let me trust you. From now on, Vignette. Please.”

  She looked up and squarely met his gaze, then hugged him again, nodding. Suddenly it frightened her to think how close she had come to setting off a real disaster for both of them. A wave of guilt overwhelmed her. She was glad that Shane was not there to see this.

  “I’m sorry.”

  They stood hugging for another quiet moment, before Vignette stiffened slightly and pulled back to look at him. “When did you say they found out?”

  “Late this morning. Somebody had a couple of officers deliver a note to Chief White. I guess it wasn’t too long before he had my captain summoned to a meeting and really chewed him out.”

  “No, that can’t be right,” Vignette said. “They already knew, early this morning. The officers came to put in the telephone, first thing. They told the Eastern…Miss Freshell. She waited around until I got up, just so she could tell me that I’d been caught. She’s so sweet, mmm?”

  “You’re saying that the officers who installed the telephone were also messengers, and they had a message for you about all this, but they left the message with her instead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Early this morning.”

  He sighed and shook his head, rubbing both hands over his face. “I’m tired. Why don’t you go on ahead to bed? I’m going to have a brandy before I turn in.”

  She quietly agreed and left the room, chastised. But he called out to her, “You sure it was this morning? When they told her?”

  Vignette stuck her head back in the doorway. “Told you, I wasn’t even up yet.”

  “Okay,” he replied with a tired smile.

  After she left again, Blackburn sat for a long time, staring into the gas flames. His mood was darker than usual. The gas fire and concrete logs reminded him of the flaming leaks that burned in the broken rubble after the Great Earthquake.

  He still hoped that there would turn out to be a plausible explanation for why Miss Freshell already knew about Vignette early that morning, before the department found out. He needed time to think it through, but first he had to get some sleep. A faint sensation of dread was just beginning to throb beneath his stomach.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY

  THE PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION

  THE LATE AFTERNOON LIGHT from a cloudless sky made for perfect visibility; there was no way for the nondescript man to keep any potential mistakes from being seen. Even though he was more filled with rage now than he had ever been back when he thought God was on his side, he remained alert enough to wisely avoid passing in front of the Japanese Pavilion. It would be too easy to attract notice from there. The place was already surrounded by watchful guards because the damn industrious Japanese had to go and make the other construction teams look bad by being the first to complete their hall.

  The shopgirl walked stiffly beside him, an arm linked through his. She trembled in fear, with his pistol surreptitiously tucked into her ribs. He could sense the weakness in her knees and feared that if he allowed her to stop or even to slow down, her legs might give out, drawing attention.

  All six hundred and twenty-five acres of the exposition site were alive with last-minute construction. Any of the workers would sound an alarm if they saw a young lady collapse, perhaps even heard an attempt to scream.

  The tension of his situation was so high that it briefly penetrated his sense of purpose. At first, the awful danger of snatching up this charming girl and forcibly walking her across the fairgrounds filled him with an erotic sensation.

  Halfway to their destination, that feeling had decomposed into a more pragmatic state of fear. Caution kept him moving briskly along. He bruised her ribs with the pistol barrel to make sure that she followed like a good girl. It took all his concentration, because even though he had no desire to be caught, her growing terror and confusion warmed him inside.

  The simple goal was to keep moving, giving the impression that they were a couple leaving work together. Nobody would pay any attention. His presence made it almost certain, because he had always moved within a curious sort of empty space. It traveled everywhere with him. The empty space cloaked him so well—whether he liked it or not—that in most situations he could arrive, stay, eventually leave, and as far as most other people knew, he had never been there at all.

  The anonymity was neither entirely reliable nor as good as actual invisibility. Because there were always those occasional noticers, coming out of nowhere and having to notice every damned thing. They provided the risk element. Just one noticer could be enough to set off a whole chain of them—busy little noticers forming a promenade leading him straight to prison.

  Unacceptable. If things went wrong, he was genuinely terrified of the consequences. But the wave of pleasure that accompanied the danger was so strong that now his legs were becoming as weak as those of personal Revenge girl, if for different reasons. The similarit
ies between an assailant and his victim were beautiful to him.

  “Step along,” he whispered through a fake smile. He pushed the barrel into her ribs again, just to remind her.

  Luck kicked in for him at that point; everyone else passing by was too busy to notice anything. Revenge girl managed to keep her feet under her, no doubt hoping to buy good treatment from him with her cooperation.

  At any other time, she might have been able to do just that. But God had made a mockery of the nondescript man. The same God to whom he had been so grateful, one day earlier, had abandoned their partnership in the mission to bring down a man whose arrogance cried out for destruction.

  The Divine betrayal was even worse than it would have been for him to discover that God did not exist at all, because the betrayal was personal proof that God not only existed, but was the type of Heavenly entity who was willing to fill a desperate man’s hungry soul with the impression that guidance was at hand every step of the way…only to turn his back upon his nondescript servant at the most crucial moment.

  Oh no. No, no, no.

  His rage was a boiling black tar, clinging to anything that it touched, burning away. He guided the terrified shopworker into the Hall of Science, down to the completed “Cave Dwellers” area where his workers had been given time off for finishing ahead of schedule. He checked to see that all was clear, then quickly pulled her back through his concealed door and into the large dead space behind the imitation cliff.

  He had fixed the trick door and added some more insulation to the inner “cave.” With nothing left for him to do but finish the display’s last few touch-ups himself, he had spent his free time behind the fake rock cliff, readying a private little area that God, as it turned out, may not have picked out for him after all—but which He really should have.