by Alex Dolan
Walter gave the federal agent a look that said: she didn’t learn her lesson. “My dick got lonely, and occasionally you have to fuck something. It’s good for your health.”
“So, you fucked your sister, then.” It came out intentionally vicious.
“Everyone always makes a big deal about that. It doesn’t feel any different than anyone else, Agent Kali.” His eyes darted this way and that.
“She loved you.”
“How do you know that?” he asked pointedly. “You ask her?”
There was no sense in lying, especially since I didn’t fully understand the point in talking to Walter in the first place. “I did. You can tell by the way she talks about you. She wanted to have a family with you.”
He resigned. “That she did.”
“That’s why she helped you steal the kids.”
Leland conjectured, siding with me. “Love does crazy things.”
Walter raised his eyebrows at Leland, imploring him to shut me up. He fought to remain calm. “What’s her point?”
I asked, “Did you want a family with her?”
He tried to seem self-assured, but his chin spasm betrayed him every few words. “Hell no. What would I want with a family?” He leaned toward Leland and the shackles rattled. I could smell that he hadn’t brushed his teeth that week. “You know how it is when you got some crazy bitch that won’t let something go? It’s everything I could do not to take a hammer to her.”
To fake composure, I sounded as mechanical as possible. “But you didn’t.”
“I did what I could to talk her out of it. Told her we couldn’t have kids, because they’d be all fucked up and deformed. But she kept at me.” He pointed at the agent to make his point. “Helena hatched that rotten egg herself.”
“Are you saying the kidnappings were her idea?”
The way he regarded Leland made me feel like I’d said something egregiously ignorant, like not knowing who the President was. “Taking those kids was her idea. That’s a fact. That’s what I’ve always said.”
“So, you had no part in the plan?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t take part,” he said. “Only that it wasn’t my plan to begin with.”
In the articles, I never read that he’d ever owned up to the crime. “Is that an admission?”
“I said as much as I’m going to say on that.”
Leland said, “Sounds familiar.”
Walter’s temple throbbed. I liked that I was getting to him, although basking in his pain made me feel like a sadist. He asked Leland, “When are we going to get to my trade?” They were speaking in shorthand. Leland had promised him something before this meeting.
“Keep answering my questions and we’ll get to it soon.” I spoke out of my ass. I didn’t want to get to the terms of our trade. I wanted to get us thrown out of the prison. “Why are you in such a hurry anyway? You got big plans for tonight?”
He took my question seriously. “I go back to the room and listen through my little window slit for the birds. They got herons and scrub jays up here. I hope one day one might fly in and I’d be able to eat it, but they’re too big to fit.” Maybe he was crazy after all.
Now Leland spoke, introducing a new topic. “That’s because instead of windows, you have loopholes in your cell. You know where the word loophole comes from? It’s the arrow slits they carved into castle walls so that bowmen could shoot arrows from their little nooks. They built loopholes into the cellblocks here because of the whole San Sebastián lore. In your cell, that thin sliver of light is coming from a loophole.”
Walter mused, “Loophole…” He thought about the word. “A loophole is what gets you out of something. I need a loophole.”
“Sounds like you could sure use one,” Leland said, guiding the conversation.
Walter finally looked at me. “I need a loophole to get me out of this place.” Facing me, breathing toward me, I inhaled the full potency of his stink. “You are my loophole—you know that, right?” He pointed at Leland. “He told you that right? You’re going to be my loophole.”
“A loophole to get you out of prison,” I said for Leland’s benefit. This was one hell of a trade he’d made with Walter.
“Walter…” Likely hearing the contempt in my voice, Walter went back to ignoring me. “Walter…” My instinct was to reach toward his arm to get his attention. If I touched him, the guards could end this. Leland should have stopped me—he had been so quick about deflecting my slap. But Leland didn’t get in the way of my slow reach toward Walter Gretsch. I expected that if I drew close to him he might attack me, and I would be willing to prompt an attack if it meant calling the guards. But Walter squirmed away from my arm. The prospect of my touch clearly revolted him. “Look at me, Walter. Look at me.”
Leland sat back and folded his arms. Now that I was engaged with the convict, he wasn’t going to get in the way. Walter eventually swiveled his head toward me.
“You don’t think you’re getting out of here, do you?”
Walter shook his head.
I asked, “He told you that I would kill you, didn’t he?” Leland looked skyward in disbelief, as if I’d just embarrassed him. Walter seemed confused by my tone, but nodded. My guts twisted. If Leland had promised him this, his promises really weren’t worth anything.
I decided that we might as well end this, and my best bet was to rile up the convict. “Why would I do that, Walter? You’ve got a nice home here. Sure, maybe you feel a little trapped, but it’s a home. You can lay down roots in a place like this. You know where you’re going to be for the next two years…the next twenty…the next fifty. Why would I want to deprive a man of his home?” His limbs trembled as if I’d sent an electric current through him.
I leaned forward, tempting him to lunge at me. His hands might reach my neck before the chain snapped. Walter’s hands rose from the table top, quaking, but they retracted from mine. He ground his molars, his right eye blinking faster than the left.
He pleaded with Leland, “You can’t let this fucking cunt tease me.”
Leland gave me a slight shake of the head, the way a pitcher might shake off a catcher’s suggestion. I kept pushing Walter, leaning ever closer so he might get the itch to lash out. The bruise on my throat would be worth it. “By all accounts, someone should have slipped something sharp between your ribs by now. You should be grateful to be alive.”
Walter’s eyes toggled between Leland and me. His head jerked to the right. “You know I’m not.”
Leland saw how far I’d leaned toward Walter. “Keep your distance, Kali.” When I didn’t move, he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.
Walter’s eyes fluttered as if a contact dislodged as he tried his best to stay calm. Leland breathed deeply through his nose. No one was going to lose his temper at the table. Unbelievable. Walter actually inchwormed away from me on his bench, as much as the chains would allow.
I frowned. “What’s death worth to you, Walter?”
He looked at Leland. “She doesn’t know?” He began breathing hard, on the brink of hyperventilation.
“Kali,” Leland protested.
“What would you give me for killing you?”
“Air,” he gasped. For a moment I thought he was short of breath and actually asking for oxygen. “There’s no air in here.” I thought he might be using a metaphor, but he spoke literally. “They suck the air out of my room when I get back in my cell. They do that with all of us. That’s how they keep us docile, like fucking cows. They suck the air out so we don’t have enough air to think. Like being at the top of a mountain. Like being drunk all the time.” He believed this. Walter Gretsch really was crazy. “They’re killing me already, just slower.”
Viscous drool drizzled over his lower lip. I sensed that captivity might have heightened his delusions. With my own taste of captivity, I sensed how Walter might feel—instead of feeling empathy, I relished the torment he must have endured. I hoped that didn’t make me a
bad person.
He begged Leland, “You promised.”
Since Walter wouldn’t answer me, I asked Leland, “What was Walter going to trade for me?”
This was getting nowhere, so I got desperate. I reached across the table and seized Walter’s hands. At first, he blenched like I was hurting him. He tried to pull his hands away but I wouldn’t let him. His fingers were cold as raw fish, with softer skin than mine. The grime on his fingertips smeared on my hands. Possibly he considered how to hurt me, but if he stood up, I planned to ram my forehead through his nose. I wasn’t afraid of this man.
The guards sprung to action when they saw me holding his hands. They shouted for us to stop touching, but I didn’t pay attention, so the one outside the pen unlocked the gate. The visit was almost over. Walter Gretsch faced me dead on. He didn’t have any more time to waste.
The door to our cage unlocked and rattled on its hinges; then the guard charged inside. I was about to go home. Walter Gretsch summoned the strength to give me an answer, finding the will not to twitch. He said, “If you deliver me, I will tell you everything.” His eyes found Leland, and then came back to me. “He promised.”
Chapter 12
As we drove back to Berkeley, I was the quiet one. Leland had lied to Walter Gretsch, and that likely meant he had lied to me. If our agreement was worthless, then I might never be rid of Leland Moon. I felt more trapped in that car than I had in the prison.
He assured me, “You’ll be all right.” I smelled Walter in my clothes. He’d gotten into the fabric.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“For Walter Gretsch, that wasn’t a bad first impression.”
“Meaning that it was an accurate impression?”
“Meaning he was well behaved.”
“It could have gone worse.”
“Much worse. He was put off by you. He can’t handle himself around grown women. You made him nervous.”
“Likes kids but not adults,” I noted.
“Remember why he’s in there,” he said. “Once they knew that was a trigger for him, they played on that when he was arrested. They showed him porn magazines, and he reacted the same way you’d react to a spider crawling on you. As far as we can tell, the only adult he’s ever been with has been Helena, and they only had sex when they were teenagers. She aged out of her allure a long time ago.”
My forehead pressed against the glass as I contemplated the man I’d just touched.
“You may think you just met the devil, but you’ve probably met people just as bad riding the bus. You just didn’t know what they did.”
“You’re an interesting man, Agent Moon.”
“He wanted something from us.”
“He wanted something from you. You think I’m upset because I met some pedophile convict? Please. I’m pissed off because you traded with that man, same as me. You promised something you couldn’t deliver. You know I won’t kill him—you made one of your trades when you knew full well you’d have to welch on your end. Do you think that instills me with confidence, Agent Moon? I believed that if I honored my side of it, you’d finally leave me alone. Now I’m thinking I might never get my life back. And that’s what’s making me cranky.”
“I’m going to honor the trade, don’t worry about that,” he said. I didn’t trust him, but I wasn’t about to contradict him.
We’d already gotten back to the east side of the Richmond Bridge. Around us, oil holding tanks turreted the hillsides in muted orange. I hoped he would let me go. I wanted to climb in my car and go home. That night I would celebrate with a wheat beer and a specific flourless chocolate brownie they made at a local bakery in Bernal. I’d kiss a boy, maybe more.
Leland continued, “He’s a tough nut to crack. Sometimes I wonder how much is real crazy and how much is pretend crazy. But it all comes down to actions, I suppose. Someone does the kind of things he’s done, it doesn’t really matter that much if he’s aware of what he’s doing.”
A passing condominium billboard pitched that if I lived there, I’d be home by now. If it meant getting out of the car sooner, I’d have considered it. “So, we’re done then?”
“You’ll be done with your part of the trade today, I promise. I gave you my word on that, and I’m not going back on it.” The highway hummed for a few beats. “But I’d like you to talk to Veda before you go.”
“So, we’re not done.”
“It was his request, not mine.”
We got off at Ashby Ave. The parked cars on his street were kissing bumpers. Music grew louder, coming from the Moon house itself. We pulled into the driveway. The front door was open, and people I’d never seen stood chatting on the threshold. A teenager hauled two bags of ice on his shoulders around to the backyard. The beat was vintage funk.
Tesmer stood behind the living room window. She didn’t acknowledge us. No one did. The Moons were having a party.
“This isn’t a holiday, is it?” I tried to remember.
“No.”
“Someone’s birthday?”
“No,” Leland said. “We just like to be social. You should try it.”
In the rearview, two cars sandwiched my cobalt blue jalopy, giving me an inch of clearance on either end. In the one in front, two men sat in the front seat, both young white men with trendy facial hair and sunglasses. They had the look of finance executives trying to be hipsters and seemed to be staring straight at me. The car stood out—a nondescript silver sedan that sparkled in the way that only scratchless rental cars sparkle. Kali drove enough rentals to spot one.
Leland saw them too. He angled himself enough to read the license plate, which he keyed into his cell phone in case he needed it. After Leland waved to the men, the driver started the motor and pulled off. He said, “Just so you know, whatever that was, they weren’t here for the party.” Too much was happening to think about random men. I’d wonder about it later.
Leland gave the horn two taps to alert Tesmer, and she bounded out to the car. She was dressed in a white suit with high shoulders, and seemed positively electrified to meet us. She tapped his window, joyful in a way that typically comes from a prescription kicking in. Leland rolled down the glass.
She asked her husband, “How did it go?”
“About as well as you think.”
“Well, you’re here,” she said brightly. “Can you come in? Veda wants to say hello.”
“You mean good-bye,” I said.
“Of course. He wants to talk to you.”
I didn’t want to go in there. I wasn’t feeling social, especially after Walter Gretsch. Especially after Leland made me doubt whether he’d ever leave me alone. Logistically, it made more sense to drive off now that the phantom driver had pulled out from in front of the hatchback.
“Come on—it’ll be quick,” she assured me.
“You’re in the home stretch,” he said.
I was so close to finishing this trade. This was the last thing they wanted of me. If I said a quick good-bye, I could go home. “Sure.”
As if preparing for a terminus, I took an extra moment in the car to pump myself up for the party. I told myself it would be safe in there, because of all the people. I tried to tell myself this would signify healthy closure, making it easier for all of us to part ways.
The Moons walked me inside. Veda sat in the leather armchair, but it didn’t appear as though he wanted to talk to me. He wasn’t any happier to be there than I was. A crowd of mostly adults milled around him. One woman patted his shoulder in passing, and Veda feigned congeniality, as did I. When he smiled, it was a warm, elastic smile, but I knew he was faking it. Once the woman passed, his face returned to the same impassive, unreadable enigma that had puzzled me over dinner. Most of the guests left him alone. Veda scratched his arms and eyed the hallway, maybe hoping he could dart to his bedroom.
Friends and neighbors—whoever they were—mingled around the floor. Mixed ethnicities. Mixed incomes too, judging from the clothing. I wondered if this w
as a church group, but other than Tesmer, no one was that formal. Fashion ran the gamut from cocktail dresses to sandals. People watched me keenly as soon as I came in, not curious the way one would look at a stranger, but smiling and nodding like they knew me. One freckly man in plaid shorts strode up to me and tried to shake my hand. Tesmer said, “Not now,” and, mildly surprised, he wandered back to his clique.
Tesmer and I sat down on the white sofa. In her suit, she blended into the upholstery. I sat next to her, close to Veda, but as close to the edge of the couch as I could get. Leland pulled an ottoman close to his son, on the other side of me. We formed a little cluster in the middle of their party.
Veda was odd man out in terms of wardrobe. He wore a T-shirt and shorts; the way I’d want to be dressed on a warm Saturday. Palms up, he showed off the two long scars that ran down his wrists. I thought about taking off my suit jacket, but I didn’t want to get comfortable there. I wouldn’t be staying. With Leland, Tesmer, and me in suits, we looked like a parole hearing.
Veda played with his hands, tapping each finger on his thumb in sequence. Since he didn’t say anything, I decided to be the first to speak. “I wanted to say good-bye.”
“Yep.”
This seemed about as much of a reaction as I was going to get from him. I had a surprising lack of desire to connect with him. When someone’s personality flatlines, it’s hard for me to give that much of a crap about them. I started to stand, and Tesmer touched my arm. “Please, Kali.” Her voice was soothing. Veda seemed suspicious, if in fact I read his expression correctly. She said, “Let’s sit for a moment.”
We sat in silence, all of us looking at each other. I didn’t know what was going on, and I could tell Veda was confused too.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Why are you being weird?” Veda asked his parents. Tesmer and Leland looked at each other, waiting for something to happen. Around us, the conversation softened, and the people seemed to be anticipating something as well.
I almost expected another prayer, but no one said anything. Things couldn’t have seemed stranger. But in the spirit of finishing my good-byes and getting back to Bernal Heights, I went along with it. Veda fidgeted, speeding up his finger taps. I didn’t know what we were doing. But we sat there, not talking, not praying, and not engaging with other guests.
