Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff VanderMeer

  I had the heat on, and gloves on, too, as the temperature had plummeted like a duck shot out of the sky. Sleet, and the wipers on. But, then, out of all that nothing, I found it.

  Hillman’s car. In a spot under a good, bright streetlamp. Sitting there innocuous in front of Room 112 of the Black Bear Motel.

  I parked three spots over. Thought better of it, hesitated, then pulled out my gun, safety off, and got out, leaving my car door ajar to avoid making more noise. The ice machine in front of 114 growled and complained, which helped. As did the logging trucks rumbling past.

  The garish pink of the motel doors made them seem to pulse against the mist like they were breathing. I stood there in front of 112, deciding whether to knock or not. Not even passkey technology. I could see where the frame was rotting and how the space between door and frame was too wide, the lock silhouetted within not quite fitting.

  This would have to be quick.

  One bad shoulder. Bleeding in a new place from that mosquito-bite bullet. Leg suspect.

  Well, use the one good shoulder.

  I smashed the door down on my first try. I wasn’t even breathing hard.

  A person sat inside the freezing room. Hillman, leg still in a brace from the damage I’d dealt him. Slouched, haphazard, in a crappy chair beside the even crappier coffee table. Older, wearier-looking.

  A bullet hole through the back of his skull.

  [80]

  I had decided, on the frantic trip down the coast, in agony, in a kind of despair, that I would not be taken alive. I can’t say why the thought came to me. I won’t be taken alive. This idea that I would be trapped, captured. That I would need to make that choice.

  So I did have a small arsenal, including two thousand rounds of ammunition. Police-issue Glocks. AK-15s. Some of it from a gun show with lax standards and some from individuals I wouldn’t categorize as chatty. Among other things. If I could’ve found someone in the back country who had a rocket launcher for sale, I would’ve been tempted. I didn’t like guns, because Shot had taught me how to shoot. But I knew them. Didn’t fetishize them, but I didn’t mind using them.

  When it came time to kill Shot, I thought about using a gun. Accident. Or maybe something more imaginative. Something that didn’t include his name. But I didn’t like that any more than drowning, which felt too on point, too clearly like an act of revenge. Beyond that, I didn’t put too much thought into it. I believed at the time that the less thought, the less evidence there would be. The less evidence written on my face. Hidden in my body. That I could answer any questions from the police more honestly. Is that true? I don’t know.

  Some people get more kindly as they shed memories. Not Shot. It seemed to hone and focus the worst of him while leaving fewer landmarks for him to find his way home. So his rages lasted longer and had even less point. So his abuse became harder to predict and thus to endure. I want to say Ned’s murder accelerated his condition, but that may just be me telling a story. Me wanting the story to match up in some symbolic way. Or just me wanting Ned’s death to have made an impact.

  In the end, I confronted Shot, drunk, on the path beside the barn, because it was out of sight and because I didn’t feel I had a choice in the moment. But he saw my intent and ran into the barn looking for a weapon. But I’d removed the hoe, the pitchfork, anything he might have used. So Shot climbed the ladder, and in the end, I pushed him off the roof and he cracked his skull wide open. Before he had much of a chance to cry for help.

  A surge of emotion erupted from me in the act. I had thought it might be dispassionate, but it was too physical for that, too personal. Using what I’d learned as a wrestler. But also because, in those final moments, I saw all of Shot. I saw the truth of him laid bare. That there wasn’t much difference between who he’d been before the sickness and after. And that there was enough of him left to know what was happening to him.

  Which I was grateful for, that mercy. Because I would not have wanted to kill a stranger.

  [81]

  Hillman’s wound looked fresh, but the blood on the floor had begun to dry. The police could pull up any second. No time for anything other than looting the room, looting Hillman. I can’t say I was sentimental or respectful.

  No suitcase. Just toiletries in the bathroom. I put my gloves back on and awkwardly searched his body. Nothing except a pack of gum in his shirt pocket. His wallet lay on the floor in a spackle of blood, next to a riffled-through backpack. I took both, wiped down the doorknob, and got the hell out.

  The car engine barely turned over and then kind of sputtered to life. The car dealership was a no-go, but I doubted I could make it back to the houseboat. And I didn’t know how to hot-wire a car.

  So I took a chance. Although, by then, what was taking a chance versus taking an opportunity? Another few months like this and it wouldn’t even seem like a risk. It’d just be another thing I’d done.

  * * *

  I pulled up outside Nora’s workplace. She was the office manager for a life insurance company. I could’ve waited there, in the corner of the parking lot, half hidden by a huge green truck covered in mud. Maybe she would’ve come out before the end of business. Maybe not.

  I cut the engine. That car wasn’t ever going to start again. I got out, stood on the curb of the pathetic gray-beige strip mall that stank of some cheery pesticide. A few wary red-winged blackbirds on migration sipped from a puddle of water by the road.

  Text Nora? No, I didn’t think so. No guarantee she wouldn’t alert whoever had set me up at the dealership. But the bank kiosk next door had a fire alarm, so I went and pulled that instead.

  There came that weird hesitation built into the rituals of emergency. That moment of indecision when people just sit or stand, wondering, “Is this real?” Is it real? When no reassurance came, employees began to spill out the front doors into the parking lot.

  Even a rote emergency takes away the ability to notice other details. I lurked behind a concrete column surrounded by potted plants until I saw the familiar blouse, the large glasses, the awkward stride. Then I came out, smiling like an old friend, my arm quick around her shoulders to guide her to the side, amid some polite blather of conversation. So great to see you. In the middle of this wonderful fire drill. Imagine bumping into you here.

  I had her around the corner, behind the column before Nora had a chance to react, to resist. Before anyone else could really notice.

  I could tell from the fact she was even there that she didn’t know her husband was dead. Didn’t yet register I was dangerous.

  “Don’t shout, don’t scream, don’t do anything but smile and nod. I have a gun. Pointed at you.”

  At least Nora didn’t insult me by pretending.

  “What do you want?”

  A hardness to her features that made me think she’d have been perfectly capable of taking care of a cheating husband herself.

  I smiled. “I want your keys to your car and also your car. Which you will not report to the police as stolen.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Shut up. Give me the keys.”

  “I left the keys in my office.”

  “No, you didn’t. No one does that.”

  A glare, but also a tiny wobble. A tremble to the lips.

  “Or, we can go to the police and I can tell them how you tried to get me killed. Whoever paid you to approach me.”

  She tried to take a step back, but I had my hand clamped to her shoulder. She registered, then, that blood on my gloves had smudged onto her blouse.

  “Tell them you had a nosebleed.”

  Panic leaked into her features. I imagined I’d looked that way, early on. She scrabbled in her purse for the keys, handed them over. I didn’t think so pale a person could get whiter, but she did.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Is this the man who hired you?” I held out a photo of Langer.

  “We’ve got a mortgage. And two kids.”

  The two kids again …


  “Are you trying to say being dead would be a blessing?”

  “No, I…” Shock. Definitely not professional, but I hadn’t thought she was.

  “Do you know this man?”

  “No. It was over the phone. Cash in the mailbox. I never saw anyone. He said it was a prank.”

  A prank? That sounded more like Hellmouth than Langer. But what did I know.

  “If he contacts you again, don’t answer. Leave town for a while. Get a ride from somewhere other than the dealership. Maybe a relative.”

  The realization of what I was saying blossomed across her face.

  “And my husband?”

  “No more poker nights,” I said.

  But no reply had been necessary. She could tell as soon as she asked.

  I took the hand off her shoulder. She sagged. I let her slide to the curb. To come to rest there.

  “Point out your car.”

  She began to cry, quietly. Not that tough after all. I didn’t have time to care.

  All I cared is that she pointed to the right car.

  An old Subaru wagon. Stick shift. Dependable.

  An old beat-up blessing.

  [82]

  By the time I made it back to the houseboat, the weather had turned yet again. Humid. Sticky. Snow and sleet transformed to a driving rain. Not the usual dull drizzle. Less and less of the gentle kind.

  I took off my coat. The temperature had risen twenty degrees. I could smell something acrid as I got out, like the place had always been polluted but only recently decided to announce it. The river had gone from turgid and ice-bound to a semi-rapid torrent. The pontoon bridge flailed and buckled. My neighbor peered out a window to take a look at who had pulled up, then curtly drew the curtains.

  I would leave in the middle of the night or early morning. Lose myself in the King Range where no one could ever find me. I would be free … of everything and everyone. I wouldn’t pretend to be a detective anymore. I would abandon this deranged idea of picking up Silvina’s trail, of unraveling her mystery. I would keep the salamander only as a reminder of what might have been.

  But before I began to pack, I had to at least look at Hillman’s stuff. To protect myself. There was no way that the same person who had shot at me hadn’t also murdered Hillman. Which begged the question: had Hillman been following them or searching for me?

  It wasn’t much like going through Shovel Pig. More like going through Shovel Pig after someone had already ransacked Shovel Pig. The most conspicuous things in the backpack were a Bible and a Rand-McNally spiral-bound, grid-by-grid atlas of the West Coast. If he’d been looking for me, Hillman had been both praying for miracles and systematic.

  The Bible didn’t have a secret compartment—my first, amateur, thought.

  Other than those items, I found more chewing gum, an expired bottle of prescription pain medication, paper clips, an empty water bottle, and lint. What else had been in there?

  The rain became more urgent outside. Smashed against the tin roof. Good thing I was already in a boat.

  I turned to the wallet. Hard to tell what was missing because of what remained. Hillman’s killer had decided two hundred dollars of spending money wasn’t worth taking. No credit cards. A car insurance card, with what looked like a number code written on it, like the way someone stupidly remembers their PIN: 381 552.

  Plus a driver’s license. As ever, his photo made him look like an incompetent mass murderer. But much younger. I’d almost forgotten his name wasn’t “Hillman.”

  But I didn’t expect it to be Roger Simpson, either. Alarm bells all over.

  Ronnie Simpson.

  Roger and Ronnie.

  Imagine that. One employed by Silvina, the other by Vilcapampa Senior. Too much of a coincidence.

  I took a closer look at everything.

  Why a Bible? I wouldn’t have thought of Hillman—Roger—as a religious man. At least, he’d exhibited few religious tendencies while I was in his care.

  I looked at the numbers on the car insurance card again. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  It wasn’t. I turned to page 381 of the Bible. Nothing. Examined the page with my flashlight. Still nothing. But holding that thin sheet to the light revealed a mark of some kind on the other side. Even a light pencil stroke left an impression.

  I turned the page. And there it was. A number of verse underlined. The numbers 1 and 7.

  I felt a sudden lurching dislocation. Quickly, I turned not to page 552 but page 553. Two more numbers underlined: 5 and 2.

  1752.

  Could it be a historical date? Safe combination? No.

  5712.

  I don’t remember dropping the Bible, just the slap-thud as it hit the wooden floor.

  5712 Orchard Road.

  Like a bomb had gone off.

  The place I’d lived for so long. The family farm.

  I looked over at the eyeless salamander on the kitchen counter, as if it could help me.

  17 52.

  The only explanation I could think of: when Hillman had found the salamander and pried out its eyes, he’d found the address of the place I’d left behind so long ago. He’d known it was important. He just didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know it was about my past. But knew enough to hide it. For Ronnie’s sake?

  I tried to imagine their conversations as their paths took them farther and farther apart: Ronnie working for Silvina, Roger the heavy for Vilcapampa. Had they been talking the whole time? How had this looked at family reunions? Arguments? Or had they worked out a truce? Closer, yet no closer. Silvina’s secret like stolen Nazi gold: everyone was after it.

  It struck me that maybe “Roger” had been playing both sides. Had Vilcapampa sent him down the coast to kill me or had he come on his own mission, spurred on by Ronnie?

  There was nothing in the Hillman-Jane interrogation that I could recall that knocked loose an answer. He had probably just come to kill me, no matter what he owed his sister.

  I couldn’t lose myself in the wilderness. Because Silvina didn’t want that. So I couldn’t want that.

  Silvina wanted me to go home.

  A place I hadn’t been in more than twenty years.

  * * *

  The next hour felt like panic because it was panic. A threat gathering amorphous, and I didn’t quite know from where. I just knew I was late. Struck me in my gut, irrational. I was late. Silvina would’ve expected me to receive this information much earlier, not five months later. Instead, Hillman had hijacked it. And where was Ronnie? Close by or not a part of this?

  I packed the way someone does when they don’t care: dumping clothes and toiletries and any old random thing in my suitcase. Just shoving it all in and making it fit. Followed by an inventory of weapons, ammo, food, water, emergency supplies. Gathering what made sense to gather by the door. I could leave right away. Drive through the night. Be at the farm by midmorning or noon. I was manic by then, suffused, ecstatic, talking to myself. Perhaps in my frantic daydreams, too, I dared to imagine that this was the end of the nightmare. I would have the answers. Clever of Silvina to put them somewhere familiar to me. Considerate, not considerate.

  In some other world, I do none of these things.

  In some other world, I analyze the odds like I was taught to do. Calmly, with a coldness born of distance. That person turns their back on Hillman’s revelations. That person goes off into the wilderness anyway, knowing it’s the best move for their survival. Their sanity.

  But I was stuck in this world.

  [83]

  If I could, I would’ve rigged this confession with traps and protocols. Things you have to get through to get through, if you know what I mean. Hack your way through a jungle on your way to Quito. Make it so you can’t see everything. Until it’s almost too late.

  Are you here now? Can I count on you being here? That you made it through. That someone made it through.

  Or will I always just be writing this to myself?

  [84]

>   At some point, the rain lessening, the temperature plunging yet again, I picked up Hillman’s atlas. It was more detailed than my fold-out map, and I’d decided against any online searches for the best route. Any online activity, even from a phone I considered secure.

  I flipped through to the right quadrant. Which is when I noticed the torn-out pages, by the ragged paper shreds left behind in the spiral binding. I checked the pages to either side, looked at the table of contents.

  The missing page showed the river. Somewhere in the middle of that torn-out page lay my houseboat. I was willing to bet Hillman had marked the spot.

  I just stared at the rip. Tried to control my traitor hands.

  It didn’t have to mean anything. There were a lot of reasons it could’ve meant nothing. So few.

  I could see my landlord through the front window. He’d emerged onto his deck in his familiar lumberjack jacket/shirt combination.

  The need to talk to him came at me sharp, insistent, even if just to reassure me he hadn’t seen anyone on the property. That all I had to worry about was him.

  So I stepped out onto my deck and waved to him.

  But it wasn’t my neighbor.

  It was Langer.

  [85]

  Did Langer expect me to step out at that moment? No, his automatic rifle was pointed down. Apparently, he didn’t trust a handgun with a silencer would be enough.

  At least he knew enough not to raise the rifle. Not with my hand in my jacket pocket.

  We could see each other clear in the faded light, with the river slowing again but loud. It would take a miracle to hear each other unless we shouted. So we shouted. To the water and the birds and to each other. Two absurd, deranged apes hooting and posturing. Infusing even small, unimportant words with violence.

  “Slowly take your hand out of your pocket and lie down on the deck,” he shouted.