The Prometheus Man

by Scott Reardon

  As he passed the television, he brushed his hand along it. Static. She must have had it on. He went over to the phone and hit REDIAL. It rang twice and went to voicemail for a Café Frita. Despite the fact that she ate like there was a small demon inside her, it was unlikely she’d called a restaurant. The call had probably been made by the previous guest, which meant she’d stayed off the phone like he’d asked.

  Another sniffle.

  Wetter than the one before it.

  She must have been trying to hold it in. Tom grabbed a towel from the bathroom to stem the bleeding from his arm. A little blood clipped the edge of his shirt and tumbled into the carpet as he walked back into the room.

  “Are you okay?” he said softly.

  She didn’t move. He stayed there, waiting her out.

  “My brother,” she said. Her throat caught and cut off the last syllable.

  He lowered himself carefully onto the edge of the bed.

  “It was on the news,” she said. “Someone shot him in his house two days ago, and they just reported that they found his…” She trailed off. “They found him.”

  Tom felt himself nod in sympathy. For a moment he wasn’t the man who sat outside Nast’s house, imagining what it’d be like to kick down the door and stare into Nast’s face as he squeezed the life out of him. Mucus ran down his throat. He needed to cough, but he didn’t want to make a sound. He let it choke him.

  “They think it’s related to the murders of all those men in Paris.” Now she turned and looked at him.

  “Why do they think that?”

  “A reporter just said the killings were similar.” She hesitated. “That and my brother knew some of the men who were killed.”

  Silence.

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He thought now would be the perfect time to ask her about her father, then got angry at himself for thinking that.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “He wasn’t a good person, I guess. I mean the things he did, the people he knew…”

  He watched her eyes squeeze closed. The skin around them shook, trying to hold something in.

  When some people cried, they did it without reference to themselves. They just cried. And no matter who was with them, they were alone. Tom could only stand there and look at her. It was like watching someone drown—without being able to stick out your hand.

  She reached for a glass of water, and when she returned it to the nightstand, he saw the blood on it.

  “Your hand’s bleeding again,” he said.

  “It probably needs more duct tape.” She tried to give him that crooked little smile of hers.

  “I got some gauze. Maybe you want a proper dressing…”

  She didn’t say anything, but she gave him a look like it was her birthday and he was the only person who’d remembered.

  They went into the bathroom. Rain pelted the window, and wet leaves stuck to the glass, twitching like fish spilled on the ground, drowning in oxygen.

  Silvana flicked on the light and hopped up on the counter. In unison they both paused to take in the state of the room. The porcelain tub and sink were chipped and blackish around the edges. Everything else was white and covered with mystery stains, except for the pink bath mat.

  She nodded at the mat. “What color would you say that is?”

  “Pepto-Bismol.”

  “I think…” She regarded the bathroom. “Yeah, this is the worst bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Once, I saw a bathroom in the New York subway.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You saw it in real life? Or, like, in a documentary?”

  “I used it.”

  “Oh my god.” Now she put a hand on her chest like she was going to be sick.

  He stared off. “It was like a fresh crime scene that existed on top of other, older crime scenes. It was one of those things that’s so ugly it’s almost beautiful, you know?”

  She shook her head. “So you pretty much have Ebola now?”

  “I do, yes. And since I’ve touched your hand, you do too.”

  She laughed. It was involuntary. Then she, like him, seemed to remember the circumstances that had brought them here. Immediately it was quiet like they’d never spoken in the first place.

  She watched him through eyes swollen from crying as he placed her injured hand on her thigh.

  “So do you have any family?” she said.

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “Do you have anyone who’s like family?” she asked.

  “No…I guess I don’t.”

  She didn’t say anything at first. Then she looked him in the eye and said like she actually meant it, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He dabbed at her cut. Even though he wasn’t looking at her face, he knew she was in pain. He could feel it in her hand.

  “Oh my god,” she said, pulling his shirtsleeve back to reveal the cut on his arm. Then she noticed something on his neck and pulled his collar back. In the mirror, he saw the top of a black bruise.

  “What the hell happened?” she said.

  “It looks worse than it is.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He needed the gauze behind her on the counter, so he pointed at it to warn her he was about to come closer. She nodded as if to say he didn’t need to ask. But when he leaned in and reached around her waist, their arms touched. She flinched.

  She froze, blushing hard, and tried to laugh it off. But no sound came out, so she was left smiling painfully as she tried to hold an awkward lean away from him. Her shirt had ridden up, and his eyes instinctively ticked down to the flat of her stomach. As if sensing this nakedness—and his interest in it—she pushed the shirt down and resumed her awkward pose on the edge of the counter.

  Suddenly he felt intensely aware of just how close they were, how alone. They were about to spend the night together in this room—something he’d never done with anyone before, even though he was twenty-two.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “It’s funny. My brother was a lot older than me. But I keep thinking of the boy I grew up with. Then I think about the first time he was arrested. It’s weird. I loved him, we all did, but there was always something wrong with him.”

  She waited for him to say something, but he just couldn’t think of anything normal to say about the death of a man who deserved exactly what he’d gotten. Then he thought about Alexander Nast and his connection to the voice on the other end of the phone.

  We want the girl.

  “Do you have family other than your brother?” he asked.

  She nodded. “My mom.”

  “Are you close?”

  “Yeah.” She hesitated. “I mean we don’t see each other much. But that’ll change at some point.”

  “And your dad?”

  She looked away. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  He was about to ask more, but stopped himself.

  It’s not right to do this now.

  He tucked the end of the gauze into a fold. When he looked at her, Silvana was tearing up again. She waved a hand over her eyes the way women do when they don’t want their makeup to run.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I think this is the last of it.”

  She shimmied her butt toward the edge of the counter, like she was about to jump down.

  “You want a hand?” he said. “You’re kind of . . .” He pointed at her bandage.

  “Um, yeah, do you mind if I . . .” She raised her hands toward his shoulders.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.”

  She put her arms around him. He slid his hands under her arms and pressed his fingertips into her skin. After looking at her for so long, it was almost startling to actually touch her. As he lifted her up, he could feel her breath on his neck.

  Once she was back on her feet, she gave him a half-smil
e, and for the second time, he wondered if he’d made a mistake going after her.

  “We should get some sleep.” He said it casually, sensibly, like they weren’t two strangers clinging to each other in a motel off the highway.

  “I’m already there, but I need to kick you out first.”

  She locked the bathroom door behind him. A minute later the toilet flushed, and she appeared, eyes at half-mast. She paused when she saw him sitting on a sheet on the floor, then went over to the bed and slid onto it.

  As she bent over, the top of a black thong with white dots poked up from the back of her jeans. He could see the tension in the fabric. It was so girly, unlike the rest of her outfit, that for a second it embarrassed him to know she’d been wearing something so sexual that close to him, nearly touching him, this whole time.

  The thong disappeared. She tugged the jeans up a little, and he could see the curves and muscles in her legs flex and let go through the denim. He stayed still, letting his desire wash over him until all that was left was a dull empty ache. He sat in the ache.

  Silvana gator-rolled around and around in the bedsheets until magically she was underneath them and they were no longer pinned to the bed. She turned to him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For being kind.”

  He was vaguely aware of nodding an acknowledgment.

  “Good night,” she said.

  And before she rolled over and fell immediately to sleep, he saw it again: that crooked little smile wrinkling her face.

  CHAPTER 24

  Bogasian reached Sarmad’s mansion a few hours before daybreak. He stopped his car at the gates, which looked ready to collapse. He didn’t want to risk knocking them down and having some nosy cop come up to the house, so he left them in place and scaled the wall.

  The house was quiet, and all the lights were off. Tire marks on the lawn led to a fifteen-foot hole where the front door used to be. With one step, he went from grass to foyer. He walked upstairs. The wood on the massive doors to the study was split.

  Inside, the floor safe was open.

  When he went back downstairs, there was a man in a suit flopping around, trying to work himself out of the floor.

  Bogasian allowed him to finish standing up, giving him a clear shot.

  Then he fired twice into the man’s chest.

  He found two other men on the ground floor. They looked like they’d been thrown into each other. He could hear them breathing. They were both still alive. By the time he left, they no longer were.

  Outside he got back in his vehicle and turned down the road. In the distance, he saw a car moving toward him. He pulled off into the darkness of a tree canopy and killed the engine. The car got louder. When it passed, the pressure in the air rocked his car gently.

  In the rearview mirror, he watched the car brake at Sarmad’s gates. The driver parked off to the side of the road, the way Bogasian had, and two men got out. Bogasian uncapped a pair of binoculars from the backseat and watched them. One, he didn’t recognize. The other was Karl Lyons.

  A man he’d last seen looking at him through the window to his recovery room.

  He didn’t know whether Karl was after Sarmad or Tom, but he suspected it was both. When Karl disappeared from view, Bogasian put his car in neutral and let it coast down the hill. At the bottom, he keyed the ignition and went looking for Tom and the girl.

  CHAPTER 25

  The first thing Karl noticed was the fifteen-foot hole in the front of the house. Then he saw the gates looked like they’d crush anyone who tried to move them, so he and James climbed the stone wall.

  As they crossed the lawn, wind gusted against the leaves with the ebb and flow of ocean waves. He didn’t like approaching the house like this, out in the open. Whatever was waiting in the house could see them, but they couldn’t see it.

  With rubble popping underfoot, they went in through the hole and stood in the landing, listening. Wind hissed through the entrance. In a hallway they found the bodies of two men. In the darkness, the men almost didn’t even look out of place. Karl checked the casings with a flashlight. They’d been shot with a 9mm.

  There was another body in the foyer, right where they’d come in. The man was splayed out in a shadow that covered the corner of the room like a web. Flecks of blood dotted the backs of his hands, which meant he’d had his arms raised when he was shot. He’d seen it coming.

  Karl thought about Tom’s reluctance to harm the Marines in the embassy. He’d had a gun, and yet he hadn’t used it. Maybe he’d gotten over that reluctance. Or maybe someone had been here after him.

  Bogasian, was this you?

  They went through the rest of the house, but they didn’t find Alan Sarmad.

  There were fourteen parking spaces in the garage. Only thirteen cars.

  They went to the empty space at the end of the row and looked around. Karl noticed a phone by the wall. Someone had dropped it. He picked up the phone and looked at the last numbers called. There was only one.

  He dialed it. The phone kept ringing. No pick-up. No voicemail. James used his phone to do a reverse lookup for the number. There was no name, but the line went to a farmhouse five miles away. Google Satellite showed the house had been torn down. All that was left was a barn.

  Karl didn’t like that.

  He turned to James. “I’m going to drop you off in town. Go to the airport. Get the plane ready.”

  James looked like he was going to say something, but he just nodded.

  Karl drove him into the sleeping town and then headed for the farmhouse.

  They were already high above the ocean, but the directions took him even higher. The hills off the coast in that part of France were steep, and the road had to wind back and forth to make it up them.

  At the top, the ground leveled off. He took another road that curved, parallel to the water. He couldn’t see the ocean, could only sense that it was there, existing in the emptiness beyond the hills.

  The road was little used. No headlights or streetlamps warmed the gray countryside. Telephone poles lined the crumbling pavement. They didn’t seem to connect to anything.

  The road split. One fork led deeper into the countryside, away from the ocean, and the other straight ahead, into a forest. Karl took the second. The road turned into a dirt path and began to snake through the trees. It was impossible to see more than thirty feet ahead. He wouldn’t know what he was coming up on, so he rolled down his window, hoping he could make up in hearing what he’d lost in vision.

  The path straightened and then narrowed. It became a hallway of trees. Leaves slapped the windshield. Branches scraped the sides of the car like fingernails.

  He came out of the woods onto another open stretch of country. There were no telephone poles. No street signs. He didn’t hear any birds, not even crickets. The other area looked abandoned. This one looked like no one had ever taken an interest in the first place. As he approached a thicket of trees, for some reason he thought of the story about ancient Spartans driving the Argives into the sacred grove, then setting it on fire and watching in silence as a thousand men burned alive.

  He didn’t see the barn until he was about to pass it.

  It sat at the edge of the trees overlooking the hills below. He braked gently and looked around for some sign of people. Then slowly, with rocks and twigs popping under his tires, he drove to within a hundred feet of the barn and got out with his gun.

  His shoes were loud on the gravel as he circled around trying to find a window. There wasn’t one, so he put his ear up against the wall of the barn and listened. If there were any sounds being made inside, he couldn’t hear them.

  He stood, thinking. The wind whipped his clothes tight against his skin.

  He walked around to the main door and got down in the dirt to see if there was any light under it. Nothing. He tried the door. Locked.

  He got back in his car and drove down to the front of the barn. Then
he turned the car around, put it in reverse, and backed into the barn door. He heard the wood shriek as the collision knocked him forward, harder than he liked. He climbed out. There was a huge rip in the door where his car had hit it, leaving a triangle of black space all the way to the ground.

  He stood watching the triangle, waiting for something to come out.

  It started to rain, and he pulled his collar tight around his neck. The wind picked up again, moaning softly from places he couldn’t see. He clicked on his flashlight and squatted in front of the opening, shining the light around the entrance. His heartbeat was in his throat. He waited for a face to pop out at him in the dark.

  A gust of wind rushed through the opening and whistled over something inside.

  It startled him. He almost broke off and went back to the car, but he waited out the urge. From outside, his flashlight was too weak to penetrate the darkness, so he got on his hands and knees and crawled into the barn blind. Once he was in, he stood up and listened.

  The only sound was his breathing. He didn’t like that, being the loudest thing in a room he couldn’t see.

  He clicked on the flashlight. Saw a desk chair, then the desk itself. He swept the flashlight around the room and stopped cold when he saw it.

  Ten feet from the front door, there was a plexiglass wall.

  It sealed off the rest of the barn.

  The wall diffused the beam from his flashlight into a milky glow. He moved the beam along the length of it, waiting for something to see the light and slam against the glass. The wind rocked the front door against its twisted hinges, and he wished it would shut up already.

  He wanted very badly to see what was on the other side of the plexiglass, but that meant he’d have to go near it. He clicked off the flashlight and listened. After a minute of silence, he crept up to the glass, hands out until he touched it. Then he pressed the flashlight against it and clicked it on.

  He was looking into a lab. It had been emptied out, but it looked almost exactly like the one outside Paris had.