Hollow Man

by Mark Pryor

  I had a date in mind and a plan well formed in my head. Like a video game, I was able to put the players in position and watch the clock ticking down, execute an escape from the grimy and appropriately named Crooked Creek Mobile Home Park with another man's car and another man's cash.

  That plan, however, went to shit on a Thursday morning when I opened our communication system and saw a message from Gus.

  A light rain fell as I left my parents’ farmhouse, both of them watching from the back door. My father had given me one brief shooting lesson in the back meadow, standing beside me and throwing a plastic bucket high and away from us, gentle encouragement when I hit it, muttered never-minds when I missed. After twenty minutes, the barrels started to get hot, so we quit and sat at the large table in his study as he showed me how to clean my new Holland & Holland .410 shotgun. I was thirteen.

  At that point, they'd lost a degree of contact with me. I'd spent three years at boarding school, and I think they watched me a little warily that morning, hoping that school and a measure of maturity had wiped away the dark edges they'd glimpsed during my childhood. The gun was another rite of passage, like boarding school, only one I'd been looking forward to since I was seven.

  In an English drizzle that morning, I walked down the gravel track and away from the farmhouse, my coat pockets bulging with Eley cartridges and a wool scarf itching my neck. My father had bought me a flat cap to go with the gun, and it, as much as the weapon itself, was a marker of adulthood. The little peak kept the rain from my eyes, but I wouldn't have minded a downpour as I set out on my first hunt, rabbits and pigeons my quarry. The prospect of my first pheasant shoot was still a month away, the time when I'd stand side to side with my father's friends, the noblest of the Hertfordshire gentry, as a long thin line of farm workers pressed slowly toward us through the undergrowth to flush wave after wave of pheasants over our heads, our waiting guns. It wasn't a slaughter, though, not like the animal-rights people claim. In fact, it was deemed too easy and unsporting to shoot the low-flying pheasants, and the guns either side of you would take a dim view if you did. No, the challenge was to shoot the high, fast ones and, even better, to “wipe the eye” of your neighbor, take out the bird that he just missed.

  But that chilly October morning I was by myself. I had to get used to the feel of the gun, my father said, the weight and the sound of it when I fired. Get used to killing something by myself, so I knew that I could. And that's what I wanted, too.

  I carried the gun under my arm the way I'd been taught, with the barrels pointing safely at the ground. A half mile from the house, I cut left along the edge of a field and headed toward the narrow end of a wood we called Arrow Wood, for its triangular shape. When I got there, I started slowly down the right-hand side, in between the edge of the trees and the strip of mustard that our gamekeeper had put down as game cover. That thin belt of mud and patchy grass was where I thought I'd find rabbits.

  And maybe my first kill.

  Up to then it'd been a few insects and fish. Same as any other boy, though perhaps my curiosity levels were a little higher. Once I'd done it, though, and seen and felt nothing, there was no great desire to harm other creatures. Not the way you read about when it comes to people like me. The question in my mind that morning was whether killing warm-blooded creatures would feel any different. I suspected not, if only because the killing itself would be more remote—the fish had been hauled in from the farm's three ponds, wriggling on the end of a line and dispatched in various ways that included a rock, a knife, and ten minutes of me staring at it flapping on the ground. Drowning, I suppose you'd call it.

  But out there by the woods, death would come at a distance. A rabbit bowled over at fifteen or twenty yards, a pigeon knocked from the sky and thumping onto the ground even farther away. I wasn't expecting much from the killing. And it wasn't just the killing that drew me there, brimming with suppressed excitement and anticipation. No, to suggest that would be a sore misrepresentation of my motivations. A huge part was the power, not just of the gun but of the trust my parents placed in me, the freedom to look like a child but act like a grown-up. I didn't want to disappoint them, either, by missing or not finding anything.

  Nor did I want to lie about what I'd shot just to impress my father. The rule was: All dead animals were brought back to the bothy, the out-building where we hung the pheasants after a shoot. Even rabbits and pigeons were supposed to hang for a day or two, to loosen the meat and improve the flavor, and my father would no doubt be waiting for my return to see how I'd done. I could lie and claim to have shot a few things, but one other rule of his was: no animal was to be left out there, either dead or wounded. If you killed it, you brought it home; and if you just wounded it, then you stayed out there until you found and killed it. He didn't miss often, my father, but when he clipped a bird, he made sure it was tracked down and its neck was wrung before he moved on. I'd seen him beating through brambles to get to a wounded pheasant, hands and legs torn up by thorns just to make sure the bird didn't suffer a slow, lingering death. I didn't care about that, but I knew enough to follow my dad's rules to the letter if I wanted to keep my new shotgun. It was a beauty, too. Double-barreled with two triggers, a forward one for the right barrel, and the back trigger firing the left barrel, which was itself choked a hair's breadth tighter to keep the shot pattern more compact for an extra yard or two.

  I walked as quietly as I could beside Arrow Wood, cursing silently as a pair of sharp-eyed pigeons popped out of the trees sixty yards in front of me. They flitted and dipped as they flew away, as if expecting a blast of pellets from behind. I looked back toward the track, and my eye caught a sudden movement ahead and to the right, on the verges of the mustard growth. I stopped to stare and listen. The mustard grass rustled, but it could have been the wind. I lifted the gun and tucked the stock into my shoulder, watching the ground where I'd seen movement. I could hear myself breathing and feel tiny drops of rain tickling the top of my nose.

  The grass rustled again, closer to the edge this time, and I shifted my feet to get a better stance, sure the rabbit would bolt for the woods. I stood like that until my shoulders ached, but I didn't want to blink first, to lower my gun and give the creature a free pass. Be outwitted by a rabbit. I sidled forward, still aiming. Ten yards away, nine, eight…then a flash of movement farther out, twenty yards at least, a ball of fur leaping out of the mustard grass onto the track of green and closing the gap to the trees in a heartbeat. I didn't aim—didn't have time to—I just jerked the gun up and swung it in the direction of the rabbit, pulling the forward trigger as its head came level with the first line of trees, letting the second barrel go a split second later, lead shot spattering into the woods with a blast of frustration and hope.

  The moment I fired, a dozen or more pigeons took off from the trees, the flap of their wings startling as they swirled over and around me before spotting the source of the noise and spiraling away, some scything the ground as others soared upward toward the low, gray, clouds. In seconds a silence fell over the woods, leaving me with just the gentle patter of a slightly harder rain, a soft thunk when I dropped two new cartridges into the gun, and the sound of my feet on the ground as I walked toward the rabbit's point of entry.

  A thin path led into the woods where the rabbit had disappeared, just in inch or two wide, and I wondered if animals had habits like us, stuck to routines and routes the way we did. Useful information for a hunter, I thought, and filed it away as something to ask my father about when I got home.

  I stood there, peering into the trees, letting my eyes adjust. I could smell moss and wet bark, and the trees reached over me to keep the rain away as I looked for signs of movement, of life. Barely six feet away, I saw the rabbit, crouching under a fallen log. At first I thought there might be two under there, but I realized why it was hiding, not running: the back leg poking out beside the blinking eyes and twitching nose belonged to the same creature. My shot had disabled it, broken it. I moved s
lowly into the woods, and the rabbit tried to shrink further, its small body rippling against the dark and crumbling bark of the log. But it had nowhere to go.

  I crouched down barely three feet from it and saw the blood on its hind leg. My father hadn't told me what to do if I injured a rabbit or hare. How to kill one off. Pheasants and pigeons, you just wrung their necks, I'd seen the shooters on a pheasant hunt do that with a quick flick and jolt of the wrist. But I didn't know if you could do that to a rabbit, and I didn't want to get bitten finding out. I stayed there looking at it for a moment, watching its tiny, black eyeballs swiveling back and forth, as if by not seeing me it would be safe. Then I pointed the end of my gun at its little head and pulled the trigger.

  I stepped into the woods just after three in the morning. A full moon cast an odd silvery light onto the path ahead of me, making me feel like I was in a photo from the 1800s. This wasn't the woods of my childhood, green and lush, with rabbits hopping into muddy burrows and the outraged calls of disturbed pheasants rising from the undergrowth. No, this was a monochrome spinney of leafless, sunbaked trees and browned grass, where dust and cicadas rose up around me as I walked. This was a place to be careful, where snakes lived and the poor Mexicans from the Crooked Creek Mobile Home Park came to have illicit sex with their neighbors or sell their drugs to children. I'd had to wait in my car while several groups wandered out of the trees, wait for them to get clear, and make sure others weren't in their wake.

  The flashlight in my backpack jostled against the camera, secure in its bubble wrap, and I was about to pull the light out when I found the perfect spot about forty yards into the woods. The tree was U-shaped, off the trail to my right, at the edge of a ditch and with its lowest branch too high for kids to climb but within reach for me. I scrambled up with a little difficulty and sat, fifteen feet above the ground in the U, catching my breath and scanning the trees for movement.

  All seemed quiet, so I pulled the camera from my backpack and got to work. It was a beautiful little device, half the size of a shoe box and could take pictures or record video. Best of all, most important of all, I could operate it remotely from my laptop, download or watch images from the comfort of my bedroom. Two hundred bucks was a small price to pay for such a beautiful little device.

  Secured in the V of two smaller branches, I lay my head beside it, making sure it had a clear view of where Silva would park his van. The final touch was to wipe the camera down with gentle strokes of my handkerchief, just in case things went sideways. If there was one thing juries loved and defendants hated, it was fingerprints. Hard to explain away innocently, and in my case, impossible.

  Happy all was safe and secure, I dangled from the branch for a few seconds, enjoying the stretch in my shoulders, feeling the pain gather after a minute, and dropping myself to the ground before it seared me, feet landing as gently as possible in the crackle of brown leaves. I looked up and had to squint to make out the camera, not even sure I was seeing it then. I took one more look around me, then made my way toward the car. On three trees I put inch-long strips of white tape, markers to my camera but haphazard enough that it wasn't obvious which tree they led to. Then, as the night lifted slowly around me, I drove away from the mobile-home park, content that my prized piece of equipment was in place, that no one had seen me, and that my plan was as close to perfect as it could be.

  The message Gus had left made my blood boil. I picked up my phone and called him.

  “Gus, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Not on the phone, Dom, jeez. I guess you got my message.”

  I got up from my desk and stuck my head out into the hallway, looking for McNulty. No sign of him, so I shut my office door. “Yeah, I got your damn message. And I want you to look me in the eye and tell me.”

  “Fine, I will.”

  “Meet me now.”

  “Dude, I've got clients coming in thirty minutes and a bunch of paperwork needs to be ready for them.”

  “Right, because that's more important than abandoning your friend.”

  “Fine, fine. Where?”

  “My place.” I left the building, checking the parking lot, hoping to see Tristan's car because this was a conversation I didn't need him hearing. He'd parked in a different spot than usual, which I'm sure irritated such a creature of habit, but it was there nonetheless, shining in the sun like he'd just washed it. I'd told Gus to meet me at my place, and he was waiting in his car in the large parking lot when I got there. He followed me up the stairs and down the hall in silence. When we got inside, I went to the fridge and poured myself a glass of milk.

  “Tristan is at work, so go ahead.”

  He stared at the floor. “I'm sorry, Dom.”

  “I'm not understanding this. The whole thing was your idea. You came up with the guy as a potential target, you're the one who persuaded me it was realistic, this is your deal.”

  “I don't want it to be. Not anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I'm not a criminal.”

  “Oh, for fuck's sake.” I took three deep breaths to calm myself. “We went through all this, we talked about it. First of all, you're a goddamned immigration lawyer, Gus. That's a criminal with a license. Every dollar you earn, pretty much, is covered in cocaine or weed, or was made illegally some other way.”

  “Dom, I know you're trying really hard to be offensive, and I get it, you're mad, but—”

  “I'm not done being mad. Second of all, as I already said, we talked about this. What's changed?”

  “I don't know. I just thought about it more.”

  “You told Michelle, didn't you? You fucking told Michelle.”

  “No! I did not. I absolutely did not. I promise, Dom, I really didn't.”

  I looked in those doelike eyes and believed him. One of the reasons I liked having him as a friend was his inability to lie to me. “Then what changed?”

  “I just thought about it. I've done nothing but think about it, and while I know it's supposed to be easy, and in some ways it'd be pretty exciting, I'm just not sure the risk is worth the reward.”

  “And do you think maybe those are some things you might have mentioned earlier?”

  “I'm not changing my mind, Dom.”

  “It's a theft. Simple, piddly theft. Burglary of a vehicle, a misdemeanor. And you know me well enough to know that I have no plans to be caught. I'm a smart fellow, Gus, and you know I'll plan this down to the last detail. The only thing that can go wrong is that we end up with less money than we hoped.” I shrugged. “Of course, we could end up with more and your little Costa Rica shack can be a mansion.”

  “I don't need a mansion.”

  “Then don't fucking build one.” I took him by the shoulders. “Gus. You may not need the money, but I do. The guy we're taking it from doesn't even…he's a slum lord.”

  “And that's worse than a thief?”

  I smiled. “Now you're judging me? For wanting to go through with your plan?”

  “You're right, it was my plan. But it's not anymore. Dom, the truth is I don't want to steal the damn money, and I'm afraid something will go wrong. Someone will get hurt, or killed.”

  “How's anyone going to get killed? I told you I wouldn't take my gun. And if we steal the car when he's not there, how the hell does anyone get hurt?”

  “I don't know, I just—”

  “Maybe we'll run over an orphan on the way out. Is that what you're afraid of?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I'm not trying to be funny, Gus, I'm trying to understand.”

  “No.” Gus was silent for a few seconds. “No, you're not trying to understand. You're trying to change my mind. I'm sorry, like I said, I really am. And you can go ahead with it and I'll never breathe a word to anyone. But I'm out, Dom, I'm one hundred percent out.”

  He turned and went to the front door, paused as if he had more to say, then opened it and walked out without looking back.

  I sat there quietly for a moment, wo
ndering what had just happened. I knew he had a conscience, and I didn't mind that about him. What I didn't get was how it could come and go, how theft can be a great idea one minute, his idea no less, and then become something too wrong to contemplate doing. That was what made me angry, that he would bring me in to a simple, straightforward act like this and suddenly turn and walk away. I was wondering whether I could somehow talk him around when I heard a sound that snapped me to attention. At first I thought it was Gus returning, but it came from the wrong end of the apartment.

  I stood and moved into the center of the room, listening intently.

  With a gentle swish, Tristan's door opened, and he stood there staring at me. His eyes were wide open and his mouth agape, telling me he'd heard everything.

  We stared at each other for a moment. “When did you get here?” I asked, my voice flat.

  “I've been here all day. I didn't go in this morning, didn't feel good.”

  “I saw your car in the parking lot at work.”

  “No. You can't have…” He shook his head, then understanding dawned. “That's Susan Walton's new car. Same as mine, just…newer.”

  Which explained the different parking spot and its shininess. I silently cursed myself.

  “Dom, what the hell's going on? What are you planning on doing?”

  “Nothing. Mind your own business.”

  “Dude, I heard most of it.”

  “Again, mind your own business.”

  “You know, you're in my apartment, discussing committing a crime. And I heard everything. That makes it my business.”

  “Did you hear most of it, or everything? Either way, no, it doesn't make it your business.”