What was your favorite thing you did today? Play with stroller an Batman. What would you like to do tomorrow? Play in backyard wid Batman an Daddy. The ’squitoes make Daddy mad. What are you most thankful for? The planes. What planes? They make rain. The rain for ’squitoes. What do you want more than anything in the world? Daddy to be happy. Is Daddy happy, Momma? Is he?
* * *
Later, Anders perched on the peak of the roof over the garage like a ruined gargoyle. The party a few houses down had gone quiet at eleven o’clock and Anders had now been squatting on the roof for several hours, watching the house across the alley. There were lights on and he could see the dim outline of moving shapes through the heavy curtains. The kitchen window had louvered blinds turned up slightly, so from this angle he had a fair look at the sink and stove area. The young woman who’d spotted him before came into view, filling up a blue teapot. She put the teapot on a burner and lay a cup and tea bag beside it on the counter. Then she stood at the sink, washing her hands, the crimson streak in her hair shining. In the kitchen light she looked young, her face sweetly composed as she stared at her hands under the water. Can’t be more than twenty-five, Anders thought. Somebody’s daughter. How do you end up here?
In the distance the droning sound of engines, semi trucks gearing down on the freeway, deliveries, drug couriers, dark workers, vans of illicit goods, carjacked SUVs, midnight road machines tearing up asphalt and laying it down, fresh and new.
The young woman dried her hands and then someone to the side handed her a large Ziploc bag. She held it up to the light, appraising the contents. Anders took out his phone and switched to camera mode, holding it forward and trying to get the images to congeal. Too dark and too far away. He needed to get closer, and with a better camera. He could see the spray of steam coming from the teapot spout, and heard the thin sound of a whistle growing louder.
Amigo.
When he spun around there were two men standing on the roof behind him, a pair of dark silhouettes where the garage met the house. They stood with a practiced familiarity, at ease, one with a long-handled spade resting over his shoulder. Anders rose from his crouch, stuffing his phone into his pocket.
Yes? What?
Amigo, one of the men said in a low voice, we have tried to tell you. Of the danger here.
What danger?
The roof.
Anders glanced down the line of houses to his left and right, the rooftops empty. The sluggish night breeze pushed the trees into a slow rotation, branches creaking, and for a moment he thought he saw the limbs of his neighbors’ trees full of forms, bodies in all manner of repose, the trees throughout the neighborhood thronged with men.
I can get on my own roof if I want, he said.
Give us the camera.
The man with the long-handled spade on his shoulder stepped forward, and in the shifting moonlight Anders could see his face, a middle-aged man, weathered, tired eyes. He held out his hand.
This will go badly for you.
This is my house. My roof.
Not your roof.
What?
Our roof. You see?
The second man stepped into the light as well, his arms loose, hands empty. He was younger, long hair pulled back into a ponytail, a utility belt around his thin waist. The other man took the spade off his shoulder and brandished it in front of him like a medieval pike. He began to move to the right and Anders backed away before he realized that he was now cut off from the side fence and the way down.
We have no choice now, the ponytailed man said. He had just the slightest touch of an accent, like he’d been educated in excellent American schools. My friend, he said, you have made a terrible mistake.
He started forward, his posture still relaxed, and Anders again stepped away, now backed into the far corner of the garage roof. The night air suddenly seemed to compress, a dull rattling roar developing to the west, and like some kind of biblical plague unleashed, all manner of animal and insect came sweeping over the roof; a platoon of chattering squirrels, streams of birds, a million flying bugs of every type whacking into them in a hard panic, and all three men crouched slightly and turned away from the onslaught. The next moment a dual-prop plane came roaring low over the trees, dumping a blanket of heavy mist scented like peppermint and bleach that settled on the men like a fog. Anders gouged at his eye sockets with his fists, coughing, his clothes instantly damp and his skin sticky, opening his eyes to see the man with the spade drawing it back like a axe over his shoulder. He took a wild chopping swing, slanting downward, and Anders dropped to his hands and knees, the spade cutting the air above his head before sinking into the shingles just beside him. Anders instinctively reached out and grabbed the shaft of the spade as the man tried to work it loose. There was a momentary frantic tug-of-war, but Anders outweighed this man by at least fifty pounds and a twisting pull brought the guy stumbling down the roof and flying over the edge with a short cry of alarm.
The one with the ponytail was quickly there beside him and Anders felt a sharp pain under his arm; as he twisted away in shock he saw that the man was holding a long, curved pruning knife in his outstretched hand like an offering, the blade wet and red. Heat spread across his side and a thin finger of pain began to creep through his chest. The chemical fog settled down around their waists and they both coughed, covering up their mouths with their hands.
When the man stepped forward and slashed at him, Anders caught the blade on his left forearm, the knife rattling across the bone of his elbow. Anders got his right hand on the knife arm and, rolling backward, used his momentum to toss the ponytailed man over him and off the roof, Anders doing a back somersault and going over the edge as well, his fingers trailing over the gutter as he fell into space. Silence.
In his first moment of free fall Anders found himself trying to look at the stab wound in his side that blazed with heat, then the next moment he considered the landing. Then he heard the ponytailed man hit the water of the pool and relief washed over him just before he tumbled in headfirst on top of his assailants.
There was a flurry of limbs and water and Anders allowed himself to stay under, opening his eyes and getting his bearings. The underwater pool light was blinding to his left, but directly in front of him the legs of one of the men kicked frantically, and Anders saw the curved pruning knife falling to the pool bottom, coming to rest with a clink beside the long-handled spade. The next moment the water was enveloped in a crimson cloud of blood, his blood.
Anders ground his teeth and grabbed a handful of the man’s pants and climbed up his back, pulling him under. He got his legs around the man’s torso and pivoted his hips, forcing the man down so that he was horizontal with Anders astride him, a position they called “horseback” in water polo. The first man, the one who’d swung at him with the spade, was doing a furious dog paddle just a couple feet from the deck edge, his breath coming hard. The guy under him twisted and clawed at his legs but Anders got his ankles locked and began to squeeze, forcing the air out of the man’s chest, the dull pop of cracking rib bones reverberating in the water. The other man reached the deck edge and turned back with a look of terror, mucus running out of his nose.
Dios mío, por favor!
Anders reached out and got him around the throat, yanking him off the wall. He got a forearm under his armpit and across the back of his neck and he cranked the man’s head underwater. This man barely fought at all, quivering in Anders’s arms like a sobbing child as he held him under.
When he released them, the man between his legs slowly drifted to the pool bottom, barely discernible in the blood-red water, his form a silhouette against underwater light. The second man bobbed on the surface, his back humped and hair spreading out like a halo, and Anders pushed him away toward the diving board.
Anders was panting, suddenly exhausted, the sound of his exhalations seeming to echo in the small canyon of the backyard. The red water in the pool sloshed like a bathtub, and he looked around wildly at
the dark windows of his house, the yard, the fence, the plastic owl perched on the diving board watching him. The pain under his side began to broadcast itself again and, glancing down, Anders could see the quick, steady pulse of blood that emerged from him like puffs of red smoke.
He heard a voice from above and saw another man standing on the peak of the roof, secured by ropes that led up into the trees, a phone held to his face, the glow of the screen illuminating his moving mouth. Anders treaded water and watched him speak, his voice faint and indecipherable. Anders held out an arm, slick with blood, and beckoned him with a crooked finger.
C’mon in, Anders said.
The guy smiled slightly and the next moment Anders heard men running in the alley. The back fence shook and a pair of hands gripped the top. Two pairs of hands. One hand held a pistol.
Oh God—Blake, Megan . . .
Anders turned and stroked to the shallow end, finding his feet and charging up the stairs. When he reached the back door the first gunshot came, splintering the brick framing of the door. He slung the sliding door open and dove into the house as the second shot spidered the glass, the third shattering it completely. Anders crawled across the kitchen floor, slipping on the glass shards, through the living room, heading toward the bedroom. A wave of weakness washed over him and for a moment he wasn’t sure he could stand. In the backyard there was a babble of Spanish and the sound of men jumping off the fence onto the patio. Footsteps crunched across the roof in several directions. Megan appeared in the main hallway, white-faced, holding Blake tightly in her arms.
What is happening?
He figured he had maybe ten seconds before they were in the house. Anders rose up and ran to his wife and daughter and, taking Megan’s hand, led her to the front door. Blake was shaking, her face stretched into a silent scream, tears streaming down her face. His daughter pointed at his shirt, torn and stained deep red, his arm with the deep slash across the elbow exposing a white nub of bone. Megan clutched at him wildly with her free hand.
Run, he said. Don’t look back. Down the street toward the avenue, and scream for help, as loud as you can. Go!
Anders opened the door and, pushing them before him, they all ran out past the trimmed hedges and across the dark front lawn. Megan ran swiftly, barefoot and soundless, with Blake watching over her shoulder as Anders pounded after them, his legs heavy and awkward. Megan began screaming.
Help us! Please, somebody help us!
The street was empty, the line of houses that stretched before them dark and endless. He was staggering behind them as they ran down the middle of the street, and the stars that he knew were not there began sparkling, expanding, as if the night sky was descending. He heard himself screaming, his voice clotted and strange.
Please help us!
The lights began exploding around him like flashbulbs, and Anders stumbled and fell to his knees. Megan and Blake were now farther ahead, becoming dim shapes.
Get up!
He saw Megan and Blake slowing, stopping.
Keep running!
More lights began to gather, emerging from the murk, and Anders thought of the muddy banks of the Nile, a man in a white-belted tunic carrying a reed basket, watching the tidal flats, burbling with gaseous emissions of carbon life. And the thinly wound cocoons of grublike flesh that sprouted six arms and pushed out of a squalid burrow to crawl the river bottom, avoiding carp and crayfish, scuttling up the bank, driven out of the water by a preternatural urge, standing now, amazed at the fresh wet wings that unfurled like flags of champion nations on a battlefield. That first flight must have been glorious! And then to navigate a land of such immensity, of moving worlds beyond comprehension, and, when finally alight on some shifting alien landscape, dipping your proboscis deep through the skin of giants, feeding on their hot coursing nectar, swelling to three times your natural size. The courage of such a thing! The majesty!
He could see other shapes around his wife and child, forms emerging from the houses, other voices, and Anders saw the lights in the houses coming on, open doorways streaming with light. People were rushing out across their lawns, men and women and children, people putting their hands on him, the sounds of their concerned voices, asking, What’s the matter, what’s the matter, what’s the matter?
THE REALTOR
BY BEN FOUNTAIN
Swiss Avenue
By their early thirties they’d made an outrageous amount of money. It had started with a group of eight investors, most of them lawyers who’d joined the same downtown firm within a couple of years of one another. Even though they’d been full-fledged professionals then, their lives still centered on whatever sport was in season, but now they played in the bar association leagues. Touch football in fall, basketball in winter, softball in spring and summer; it didn’t occur to them not to play. Only one of their group was married by the age of thirty. The rest of them continued as always, making and spending money, dating the women they met in bars. When Brice’s mother fell ill, he tried to be as good a son as possible from long distance, shuttling from Dallas to Omaha every couple of weeks. His father had died when Brice was in law school, but his two sisters still lived near their mother. Strictly speaking, they could have managed without him, but Brice was determined to do his part, and it turned out to be the longest ten months of his life, juggling his law practice with the almost ceremonial pace of his mother’s death.
That same year, his friend Steve left the firm to start a high-tech company with a former frat brother, live-streaming college sports over this new, suddenly ubiquitous thing called the Internet. When Steve appealed to his old friends for capital, Brice invested $40,000, half his inheritance, and figured he’d never see that money again. The truth was, he hardly cared. It was as if the money would always connect with the hospital smells of latex, catheter bags, the ammonia stench of disinfectant that could still turn his stomach. His mother had suffered, badly. He’d seen it up close. Those last few weeks he’d done little else but sit by her bed and hold her hand.
So he wrote the check and kissed that money goodbye. Thirty months later the company went public and made them all millionaires many times over. A year of extreme partying followed. They chartered private jets to Cannes, the Super Bowl, skiing in the Alps. Every birthday in their group was celebrated lavishly, spectacularly. They became famous in Dallas for their parties, their guy-fantasy trips abroad, and what had once been a nice, steady supply of good-looking women morphed into a scene. All you wanted, quantity and quality; that first year had been insane in its pleasures, though Brice came to realize that having money made you a harder person. It was necessary. You couldn’t trust people the way you had before, because so many of them wanted something from you. But it had its kicks, this new dynamic, it gave an edge to the sport of getting women into bed, and what you did with them once you were there. The more you had, the more you were allowed to take, apparently, and if Brice got what he wanted with virtually no strings attached, it was their own fault, they offered. There were times when his behavior was downright shitty. He didn’t necessarily admire every aspect of this person he’d become, but he was experimenting, pushing boundaries. It was part of his education in this new way of life.
He started shopping for a house in the spring. He’d already bought an Aston Martin, and upscaled his wardrobe; aside from women and the trips with his friends, he couldn’t think of anything else to spend his money on, so he started driving around on weekends, dropping in at the open houses. Realtors, he quickly decided, were shallow, often desperate people, which made it easy and satisfying to mess with their minds. He’d kept his old beat-up Camry for everyday use, and that was the car he usually took on his house-hunting rounds, parking right in front of whatever tricked-out Italianate or Georgian mansion caught his eye, so the realtor inside would be sure to see his humble ride. And how they snubbed him! They’d hardly give him a minute of their precious time, but if the house was interesting he might return in his Aston for the next open hou
se, often as not with one of his flashy girlfriends. Then, of course, the realtors fell all over him. It was a joke, their blatant shamelessness, and he wondered if it was this crude everywhere, or if Dallas was different, more mercenary. Since coming into his money, Brice’s opinion of human nature had dropped considerably.
He wasn’t in any rush. People said it was a buyer’s market, and he liked walking through the houses, seeing how people lived. He felt informed; so many different ways to go about life, and he liked inserting himself into the various possibilities. Then things got busy at work—he was still practicing law—but he took most of August off to travel, and didn’t start looking again until early fall.
He met Laney on a Sunday afternoon in September, at an open house she was holding for one of the grand old mansions on Swiss Avenue. Her name tag was pinned to the sweater of her trim skirt suit, Laney Shaver, and she gave him a smile as he slipped inside, dodging the jam-up of middle-aged couples in the foyer. She wasn’t all that special—cute would be the operative word for this youthful, pretty woman in her late thirties, early forties. She was fair-skinned, with auburn hair cut short, and a slim, fit frame, not much in the way of a chest. She was dressed as if for church, and for some reason this appealed to him, the notion that she’d gone to services this morning, then headed straight into a busy afternoon of selling real estate.
“Beautiful house,” he said when she caught up with him in the dining room. Her gear was here—MLS fact sheets, the sign-in form, the big satchel that all women realtors seemed to have.
Dallas Noir Page 3
