The 56th Man

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "Heather must have thought a lot of her daughter. I mean, for her to leave money to her daughter, in spite of everything."

  "Maybe. And maybe she felt sorry...finally."

  "Did her parents know about her dealing ‘product’?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Did she take any of it?"

  Tina twisted her lips.

  "How about Jerry?" Ari continued.

  "Ha! Pure as the driven snow." She thought the pun funny and waited for Ari to laugh. He chuckled obligingly.

  "I'll take that as 'no'. Where are Jerry's parents?"

  "Dead. No siblings."

  "And no inheritance from them?"

  "Nothing comes from nothing."

  "Ah..." Ari nodded sagely. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

  He stubbed out his cigarette and walked over to the bar. The bartender had been called to the kitchen. Marybelle gave him an inquiring look. He smiled and shook his head. When the bartender came back, Ari asked where the bathroom was. In the back, across from the kitchen. As he passed Marybelle, she smirked:

  "You could've asked me."

  In the john he relieved himself of several ounces of Canada Dry and Long Island Tea, studying the graffiti above the urinal as his bladder relaxed.

  'For the best BJ call Tina'...followed by a phone number.

  His Tina? Napkins might not be the only cause of wear on her lipstick. He had not noticed a wedding band.

  He noted a rubber strainer in the base of the urinal. It bore the slogan, 'Beat Drug Addiction'. He flushed. It was like pulling the lever on a voting machine. Of course, he had only ever voted for one man--as had they all.

  When he came out, Tina was gone. Marybelle and the bartender were intent on being preoccupied. Ari left.

  As he walked briskly up the sidewalk, Tina half stumbled out of the cobblestone alley that ran behind Ali's Market. She had reapplied her lipstick--without, it appeared, the aid of a mirror.

  "Mr. Simon."

  Ari stopped and looked down at her.

  She waited for him to respond, then said, "You didn't ask where she got the product."

  "No, I didn't." He resumed walking. She stutter-stepped beside him, struggling to keep up.

  "Hold on, will you?"

  "Why? You want to tell me? Why? Because you've changed your source? Because it no longer bothers you to betray your old provider?"

  She hesitated only for a moment, but it was long enough to put her well behind. She raced after him.

  "They kicked me out of the Shamrock because of you."

  "They'll let you back. They only wanted to be rid of me."

  "But it hurts, you know? It hurts."

  Ari found it embarrassing to have a woman chasing after him. He turned to face her. "You'll make it up."

  "It hurts..."

  She was encompassing much more than an evening's income. Everything hurt. It had a sorrowful effect on her appearance. Invisible weights dragged at her face, her unbuttoned jacket, even her black hosiery, wrinkled at the knees.

  "Stop using your product," he said. "And stop drinking so much. Maybe then you can pull your life together."

  "And if that doesn't work?" Her voice had the plaintive edge of a child or a hoarse old woman.

  "We all take risks." He turned away from her.

  "Could you at least give me a ride home?"

  "I have an appointment."

  "You're loaded with appointments, aren't you. Listen, I don't think I can drive like this."

  "How do you usually get home?"

  "All right. I usually risk it. But for once...can't we give the world a break?"

  Give the world a break....

  He glanced at his watch. It was only 8:30. He looked on as she wobbled unsteadily on her shoe heels. They weren't especially high, but she might as well have been teetering on a mountain ledge. He imagined her careering into an oncoming car.

  Give the world a break.

  "Very well. Do you live far away?"

  FOURTEEN

  The heat in the Bradley would have been tolerable under normal circumstances, but the balaclava made it a torment. Ghaith told Captain Rodriguez he preferred getting blown up in the open to dying of heat stroke inside the fighting vehicle. Rodriguez was preoccupied punching grid coordinates into his GPS and nodded absent-mindedly. But he defeated Ghaith’s intention when he glanced up and called Sergeant Mastin over.

  “Our interpreter wants to dismount. See that he has some proper chicken plates.”

  Mastin returned with a flak jacket. Hot. Heavy. In no time Ghaith was in worse shape than before.

  “You sweat like Tom Jones in concert,” Mastin joked. He too was dismounted.

  They had no trouble keeping up with the convoy, which was moving at a crawl and stopped whenever they spotted someone who might have information. Since there were very few people on the harsh, sewage-filled streets deep inside the former Saddam City, they stopped just about everyone they saw

  “Ayna howen?” Ari asked.

  “No!” was the universal answer. Sometimes they added, in English, “No mortars!”

  “RPG?”

  “No RPG!”

  “Mahdi?”

  “No Mahdi!”

  That was a howler. The Mahdi Army practically ran the district.

  “Ask him if Muqtada al-Sadr is hiding under his sister’s bed,” Mastin snarled. He too suffered from the heat, but Ghaith shot him a critical look anyway. So much for sensitivity to local customs. He did not translate the question.

  They arrived at an empty playground. Rodriquez went on the commo net to tell them that, according to the Q36, this was where some mortar rounds had come from two nights ago. The deathly gray of the playground would have seemed unnatural elsewhere, but was perfectly normal in Sadr City. All the buildings were a harsh, desert brown-and-gray. In other neighborhoods, even poor ones, residents would try to enliven their surroundings with plants or colorful outdoor murals. Not here. The few windows were heavily barred, or bricked up, or both.

  Ghaith took out an enchilada that Ropp had given him from an MRE. Ropp had told him they had field rations that were halal, and was surprised when Ghaith shrugged off the offer. He took the enchilada without sauce, tearing off the wrapper and eating it plain.

  Not bad.

  Rodriguez radioed the lead platoon, out of sight up ahead, while several squads spread out across the playground, looking for hidden weapons caches. But it appeared as if the mortar tubes were long gone--as the skeptical lieutenant had earlier told Rodriguez they would be.

  Ghaith was walking about ten feet behind Mastin when the sergeant cupped his hand over the side of his helmet and listened. Ghaith was not supplied with a communications link and had no idea what orders were coming down.

  Mastin nodded, then called out to his squad. “Blue Platoon reports IP’s in the AO headed our way. Don’t get trigger-happy.”

  Iraqi police in the Area of Operations. Sure enough, a minute later two men came around the corner and began walking along the edge of the playground. They wore light blue shirts and dark trousers. Their baseball hats said POLICE in large white letters, while their brassards repeated the message in English and Arabic. Their body armor looked fragile. They were both carrying Kalashnikovs.

  Captain Rodriguez was down from the Bradley and went up to the policemen to shake their hands. Knowing he would be summoned, Ghaith began sauntering over. After a closer look at the two policemen Ghaith’s face twisted up. Two more criminals from the pre-invasion release. This was getting ridiculous. On the other hand, it only made sense. Most of the inmates at Abu Ghraib and other prisons had been Shia, all had been poor, and a large percentage of them had gravitated to Saddam (now Sadr) City upon their release. Ghaith could expect to see plenty of scum on this patch of earth. And in spite of the power shift at the Ministry of Interior, there were still a lot of Shia in the police force, so it was not inconceivable that these two cops were legitimate. Sending Shia to police a Shi
a neighborhood only made sense, even if one was a counterfeiter and the other a serial rapist of both boys and girls.

  Rodriguez was busy schmoozing the pair of them. Ghaith finished off his enchilada, wiped the grease off his mouth with his bare hand, and wiped his hand off on one of the blue shirts speaking pidgin to the captain. The policeman turned, saw what had been done to his clean shirt, and raised his eyes to Ghaith.

  “What is this, brother?” he demanded.

  “Ayri bi rabbak,” Ghaith answered, smiling.

  A look of disgust came over both policemen. Captain Rodriguez, who had thought he was doing so well winning over these particular hearts and minds, shot Ghaith a warning look.

  “It’s nothing, Captain,” Ghaith told him. “I know Dalash and Abu Shihab from before the war. We didn’t get along all that well. But that’s all in the past, now.”

  The policeman Ghaith had used as a napkin broke out in a rapid-fire Arabic dialect that Rodriguez could not begin to follow. Which was just as well, since he was denouncing the Americans for hiring vulgar idiots to be their interpreters. Of course, neither Dalash the serial rapist nor Abu Shihab the counterfeiter had any clue who Ghaith was.

  Gesticulating, swearing, all but spitting out their wrath, the insulted policemen resumed their march past the armored column. Ghaith thought it quite a subdued reaction to what he had said and done. His suspicion mounted. He watched as the two of them turned left, away from the column.

  “What did you say to piss them off so much?” Rodriguez asked. “What does Ayri bi rabbak mean?”

  “Oh, it’s an old Iraqi greeting.”

  “Meaning?”

  “’My dick in your god’ is a reasonable translation.”

  The captain had begun to climb up the side of the Bradley. He froze, one hand stretched towards the turret, craned his head back, and said incredulously, “You said what?”

  Ghaith saw one of the policemen reach under his body armor for his shirt pocket.

  And a cell phone.

  “IED!” he yelled, throwing himself to the ground.

  But the explosion was further up the road. Rodriguez jumped into the Bradley turret and grabbed his headset. He heard an unfamiliar voice.

  “Where is Lieutenant Baker?” Rodriguez demanded, focusing on what had happened several blocks away.

  “This is Sergeant First Class Morrison,” came a voice. “They got one of the soft-skin Humvees. It’s a mess—“

  “Secure the site. Do you hear me? Work the medevacs—“ Rodriguez raised his eyes and saw two full squads of men racing away from him, led by the platoon commander. In the distance was his interpreter, chasing after two policemen.

  “Jesus clusterfuck!” Rodriguez swore, bringing up his hand mike and shouting, “Deadly force! Deadly force!”

  He entered the house through the garage and automatically checked the tape at the top of the back door. It was unbroken. No one had entered through here since that second night, when Sphinx slipped indoors. Had the intruder given up? Or had he found what he was looking for?

  He went back into the bare living room and looked at the chimney. If it was Howie Nottoway who had searched here, his fear had been a first-class act--because he already knew nothing was hidden in the fireplace. And if he had found something, there would have been no cause for fear or thespian antics.

  But Howie must be involved. Unless someone was staked out in the woods across Beach Court Lane (which Ari thought unlikely, but he would check it out next morning), he had the only feasible post from which to track Ari's comings and goings. Ari would have spotted anyone watching from a car. Howie had spoken to the two officers who had found the bodies, and probably knew Carrington through the Neighborhood Watch Association. If he had seen Ari's distinctive xB depart for the Firefox Gallery that night, he could have alerted any of them that the house was empty.

  But how had Carrington...and Sandra...known he would be at Firefox? Were the police and U.S. Marshals Service working together? Or were there two groups watching his house?

  Ari saw two possibilities, one involving chance, the other certainty, and one only a little less likely than the other. Carrington had been visiting Howie that night to learn what Howie had found out about his new neighbor. They had seen Ari leave and Carrington had tailed him.

  Sandra's presence at the Firefox could be easily explained by the Scion so kindly provided Ari by the U.S. Government—complete, perhaps, with a tracking device similar if not identical to the LoJack system promoted by car dealers.

  What else could Sandra be watching? His computer was being monitored, of that he was positive. Could she be watching him in real time? If there were cameras in the house, Sandra must have busted a gut watching him chase Sphinx and walk around in his underwear. She would have been puzzled by his searching of the house, or perhaps she would have had a better idea of what he was looking for than he did.

  He glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. Plenty of time.

  Within fifteen minutes he had satisfied himself that no one was observing his every step and bowel movement. There were no discreet spyholes, no mysterious bulges in the ceiling, nothing but light bulbs in the overhead fixtures. He went into the garage, turned on the light, and scowled at the despised xB. A cursory inspection came up empty, but that did not mean a transmitter wasn't imbedded in the frame. Even if he found one, its removal would alert Sandra that he knew she was tracking him. She might explain away her presence in the gallery as a coincidence--she had just wanted to see the art of the man whose house she had placed Ari in. But Ari had always doubted the U.S. Marshal would let him run loose without any oversight.

  They would know he had been at the Chinese market at the time of the robbery attempt, yet Sandra had not mentioned it. The store manager's loyalty might have proven critical. Sandra had not connected him to the shooter.

  He was vulnerable at three points, then: Howie, the computer, the car. And possibly a fourth: Mackenzie. He might soon find out.

  A fifth vulnerability, one that had brought him to this new land, was permanent.

  He rolled his office chair into the master bedroom, turned off the light, and sat at the window, sipping slowly on a glass of tapwater. It was a little after eleven. The middle of the river was almost invisible, with only a few reflected lights forming broken lines on the water. He could not see the Mackenzie house, but their porch light spread a faint arena across the shore. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he thought he could discern the outline of the island. If there were boats out there, he could not see them. Still, the weather was perfect. He might very well get lucky.

  Occasionally, he glanced down upon the yard, on the off chance he would spot a yellow tabby approaching the Riggins house. He berated himself for missing Sphinx.

  He could have had company for the night. Tina had made that clear when he dropped her off at her apartment complex. With some difficulty, she had leaned sideways across the knob of the shift stick and placed a warm hand on his chest, as though trying to cup his heart. Then, sensing perhaps there was nothing there, she drew back. Not bitterly, though, but with a wan smile.

  "You going to turn me in?" she said in a tone that invited him to spank her.

  "To the police? Of course not." Ari smiled back at her. "Did you or Moria sleep with Detective Carrington?"

  "Me? Maybe. Not that I remember, though." Her smile turned sad. Ari the Innocent. "Moria? Never in a million years."

  "She was faithful to Jerry?"

  "I didn't say that." She got out without saying more. Ari leaned down and spoke through the open passenger window.

  “According to the news, there was some jewelry missing. Do you think Moria could have sold it to a pawnbroker?”

  “Anything's possible,” said Tina, waving without turning back and striking out up the sidewalk with a sashay more drunk than sexy.

  What was the colloquial name for a cat? Pussycat. Pussy. Ari smiled. His English was good. Then his face dropped.

  Ah
, Sphinx, you faithless creature....

  A rocket went up in the middle of the river. The whistle and loud pop at the end were distinct, only slightly muffled by the closed window. He studied the light from the Mackenzie's porch. It remained on. Were they out for the night? Or unconscious? Perhaps Matt had hustled his wife off to Rome.

  He ran downstairs and opened the front door. He checked his watch. Eleven forty-three.

  Almost five minutes later another rocket went up. Ari switched his porch light off, then on, then off, then on. He grabbed the bag of zip ties from the living room, strolled down to the gazebo, and sat on the bench. He leaned forward, lifted away two floorboards, and pulled out a black plastic trash bag. He removed the Tec-9 from the bag and checked it closely. He laid it on the bench beside him.

  He waited almost ten minutes before he saw--or thought he saw--a smooth low shape on the water, like a miniature submarine. It would make sense for the distributors to survey the beach before committing themselves. Ari slipped some zip ties in his pocket, then leaned forward and waved.

  "Product!" came the voice over the water.

  "Yes!" Ari shouted.

  With the flowing ease of a snake the black kayak approached. It took Ari a moment to distinguish the black-attired men inside.

  A regular pair of ninjas....

  Leaving the gun behind, he stepped out in the yard.

  Although their next words were spoken lowly, Ari was just able to make out the exchange:

  "Come on, man, paddle!"

  "He's wearing a jacket and tie!"

  It hadn't occurred to Ari that looking respectable would pose a problem. He struck a pose of impatience.

  "I don't have all night!"

  They eased a little closer to land. Ari walked down to the edge of the lawn, only a few feet from the riverbank.

  "Take off your jacket!"

  Ari shrugged, removed his jacket, and draped it over his arm.

  "Throw it down!"

  "It's brand new!" Ari protested.

  "Then adios amigo!"

  "Damn!" Ari threw the jacket on the grass. His white shirt must stand out clearly. They would be able to see he was not wearing a holster. To make it even more obvious, he raised his arms shoulder level and performed a formal pirouette. One of the kayakers laughed.