Dark Winter ns-6 Page 4

  George sat down on a dark wooden chair, which squeaked with newness as it took his weight. There was nothing on his desk, except a phone and a dark brown briefcase. He motioned for me to take a chair, then wasted no more time. ‘So, what happened to the weapon?’

  I still had the empty coffee-cup in my hand: there was nowhere to put it. ‘Suzy went jet-skiing and dumped it about three hundred metres out to sea. The cases were still in the chamber. I didn’t go with her, but she’ll have done it OK.’

  George raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I couldn’t – I didn’t want the gravel burn on display.’

  ‘How is it now?’

  ‘Fine. I just can’t resist picking at the scabs at night.’ I raised a little smile but it had no effect on George. He was looking up at the fluorescent lighting set into the false ceiling. ‘I’m going to get some dimmers put in here. These things are a health hazard, not good for the eyes.’

  I nodded, because if George said so it must be true.

  He got back into the real world. ‘You and the woman . . .’

  ‘Suzy.’

  ‘Yes, you both did very well, son.’ He pulled the briefcase towards him and played with the combination locks.

  I put my cup on the highly polished floorboards. ‘I was wondering, George, what was in the bottles?’

  He didn’t even bother to look up. ‘That, son, you don’t need to know. Your part is done.’

  The case opened and he looked up, forcing a smile. ‘Remember what I told you? Our job is to make sure these scum get to see their God earlier than expected. Period.’

  I remembered.

  ‘Where are you headed now?’

  ‘Maybe away for a while, who knows?’

  ‘I want to know. Make sure you keep your cell with you. My beeper number is the same until the end of the month when I’ll give you my new one.’

  A brown Jiffy-bag came out of the briefcase and he pushed it across the table, along with a sheet of typed paper. I leant forward to pick it up as he checked out the ceiling lights once more and glanced at his watch.

  It said that I’d received $16,000 in cash from George and required my signature – maybe to stop him keeping it and buying a pony to go with his shirt. ‘I thought you said it was going to be twenty thousand?’

  ‘It is – but you just made a twenty per cent contribution to the welfare fund.’ He looked around at his plush surroundings and opened his arms. ‘There are old operators out there who didn’t have a marketing pension to fall back on when they were retired or got themselves all busted up. Life was different then, so I got to thinking that those old guys are entitled to share a little of our good fortune. Those guys find it hard in the real world, Nick. As I don’t need to tell you, it’s a jungle out there . . .’

  I took a breath, ready to say I didn’t have a choice.

  George got in before me. ‘Now you’ve settled in, this is the way it’s going to be. We all do it. Who knows? You might be calling for help yourself some day.’

  I didn’t bother opening the envelope to check. All my cash would be there: George would have counted it out himself. Everything was correct with George, everything was always on time. I liked him for it.

  He checked his watch again, then closed his briefcase and concentrated on the locks as he reset the combination. ‘This is where you leave, with your cup.’

  I’d got to the door with cup and cash in hand when he gave his parting shot. ‘There’ll always be a place for you here, Nick. Nothing’s going to change that.’ I knew he was referring to Carrie, and turned back to see his face break into a smile. ‘Until they kill you, of course. Or I find someone better.’

  I nodded and opened the doors. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. As I turned to close them again, I could see George looking up at the lights once more, probably planning a memo to the building superintendent. I hoped he had more luck with his than I did with mine.

  6

  Laurel, Maryland

  Monday 5 May, 10:16 hrs

  I sat in the back of a taxi on the way to Josh’s house, after the half-hour train ride from Central Station to Laurel. With all the messing about and waiting, I’d probably have been quicker hiring a car, but it was too late now.

  We turned the corner into Josh d’Souza’s new estate of prim and proper weatherboarded houses, and I directed the driver to his cul-de-sac. My last visit had been only six weeks ago, but it was just as hard to tell the houses apart, with their neatly trimmed grass fronts, obligatory basketball hoop attached to the garage wall, and Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze. Some front windows even displayed a blown-up photograph of a young son or daughter in military uniform, virtually swamped by Old Glory. Josh’s house was 106, about half-way down on the left.

  The cab pulled up at the bottom of the concrete drive. Josh’s place was set back from the road by about twenty metres, and on a slight rise, with his front lawn sloping up towards the house. A couple of bikes, a basketball and a skateboard lay outside the garage, and his black, double-cabbed Dodge gas-guzzler stood in the drive.

  I caught sight of Josh looking out of the kitchen window, as if he’d been twitching the curtains waiting for me. By the time the taxi had pulled away, he was standing at the white-painted wooden front door, agitation etched all over his scarred face.

  That was nothing new. Despite the I-forgive-you stuff, I still wasn’t too sure that he liked me. ‘Endured’ would probably have been a better word. I hardly ever got the warm smile he would have greeted me with before the shooting that fucked up his face. He accepted me because I had a relationship with Kelly, and that was about it. We were like divorced parents, really. I was the errant father who popped in now and again with a totally unsuitable gift, and he was the mother who had all the day-to-day problems, who had to get up in the morning and find her clean socks and be there when things went wrong, which was most of the time recently.

  He turned, closed the door behind him, and double-locked it. ‘Why don’t you ever turn your cell on?’

  ‘Hate the things. I just check messages. Calls normally mean drama.’

  We shook briefly and he waved the bunch of keys he had in his hand. ‘I’ve a drama for you. We gotta go.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He headed us towards the Dodge. ‘The school called. She got pulled up by the math teacher for being late for first period, so she told him to go eff himself.’

  The indicators flashed as he hit the key fob.

  ‘Do what ?’ I climbed into the cab beside him.

  ‘I know, I know. That’s on top of walking out on her gymnastics teacher last week. The school’s had enough. They’re talking suspension. I said you were visiting today and we’d get down there as soon as you arrived. We got ourselves some firefighting to do.’

  The massive engine kicked into life and we reversed down the drive.

  ‘You know, Josh, I sometimes think that in a past life I must have really offended someone really really deeply . . .’

  ‘You mean, as well as in this?’

  The school was just twenty or so blocks away. I couldn’t remember if Kelly walked there or got the bus. Probably neither. Kids could drive at sixteen in Maryland, and she hung around with a slightly older crowd.

  Josh waved his hand despairingly. ‘I can’t control her. She slips out at night. I’ve found cigarettes in her dresser. She’s so moody and irritable that I don’t know what to say to her. I’m worried about her future, Nick. I spoke to the school counsellor last time, but she hasn’t any answers because she can’t get anything out of her either. Nobody can.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, mate. Nobody could be doing more than you are.’

  Josh was half black, half Puerto Rican. His looks had changed quite a bit since the first time I met him. Standing next to Kelly’s family’s grave site in the sun, his hairless head and glasses had glinted as brightly as his teeth. But what you noticed first these days was the rough pink scar along his left cheek that
looked like a split sausage in a frying-pan, edged with spots of dried blood where he couldn’t get used to shaving around the lumpy tissue. However much Christian-forgiveness shit he splashed around, and however much I tried to cut away, tell myself the damage was done, I still felt as guilty every time I saw it as he did about Kelly.

  He was wearing a blue sweatshirt tucked into his black-leather belt with the same grey cargo fatigue trousers his Secret Service training team always wore, and a pair of Nike trainers. In the past, they’d always been accompanied by a very worn, light brown pancake holster on his belt, tucked against his right kidney, and a double mag carrier on the left, alongside a black beeper.

  Five years earlier he’d been on the vice-presidential protection team, part of the Secret Service, until Geri had left him and their three kids for her yoga teacher. He’d had to sell the house in Virginia because he couldn’t afford to keep up the mortgage, and had taken a job up here at Laurel, training baby agents. We hadn’t come into each other’s lives at that stage, but I knew the first few years had been a nightmare for him and the kids. That was when the born-again Christian stuff had happened.

  The Service was finished for him now. Like he told me, it had been an easy choice to make: quit, or his kids never seeing their father. Now he was a baby vicar or reverend, something like that; the God thing had given him a new career. He had another year to go before he was officially able to shout and breakdance in church with the best of them. I’d told him he ought to think bigger than that and go the TV route. I’d be his sidekick. He could talk up God for the first part of the show and after the break I would explain how the two of us, God’s little helpers, could do with a shed-load of dollars. That hadn’t gone down too well.

  ‘You got the devil, Nick.’

  ‘That’s right, I’m an agent of Satan – but my duties are now mostly ceremonial.’

  That hadn’t gone down too well either.

  The bell rang for the end of a period and a tidal wave of students and noise surged into the corridor.

  ‘I wish I could help her.’ Her maths teacher was very frustrated about the whole Kelly situation. He slowed kids down so the three of us didn’t get swept away. ‘I try to get her to talk, but I guess I just don’t choose the best days. Sometimes it’s so hard to communicate with her.’ He ran his hand over the top of his balding head and checked his fingers as if expecting to find more fallen hair. He was only in his late thirties, but already seemed broken on the wheel of life. ‘You’ve both seen it, she’s withdrawn one day, then high as a kite the next. She takes some keeping up with. The school counsellor would like to help if you’re willing to – look, here we are. I had to send her straight to the principal’s office. We have to maintain standards in the classroom for these kids. Here we are, in here.’

  He opened a door and ushered us into the principal’s waiting room. ‘Now, Kelly, look who – oh . . .’ The chair I guessed Kelly should have been sitting on had a half empty paper cup of water next to it, but that was about it. The room was empty.

  ‘She took off an hour ago.’ The principal’s secretary was big and black, radiating efficiency but still unable to hide the distressed look on her face. ‘The principal has been trying to call you, Mr d’Souza. We were about to call the police.’ She shook her head. ‘All she said to me when she first came in was she was going to Disneyland.’

  ‘Save us.’ Josh sighed as he turned to me, his right hand cutting the air. He got out his cell and started to dial. It went up to his ear and stayed there for just a second. ‘Her cell’s off. OK, we go home. If she’s not there we’ll have to call in the police.’

  ‘No need, mate.’ I started for the Dodge. ‘I know exactly where she’s gone.’

  7

  We headed west, and it wasn’t long before we were following signs for Baltimore and Washington. Josh had called his house three times already but no one was answering. Soon we were taking the ramp left on to the I-95 towards Washington. ‘Disneyland, huh? Is that what she calls her old house?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  He shrugged. ‘Did I tell you she doesn’t come to church with us any more? She says religion is a con. I don’t even think she believes it, she’s just saying it to pain us.’

  ‘You know her take on that, mate – if there’s a God, then how come her family’s dead?’

  He shot me a telling glance. ‘I’m not getting into that – and I keep telling you, go read the book.’

  I looked at the dash. The Puerto Rican in him revealed itself in the recent picture of Kelly and his three mounted there in a small but ornate gold frame. Dakota was now sixteen and had the mother of all braces in her mouth. Kimberly was fourteen and the biggest concern in her life was her hair, and the boy, Tyce, was thirteen and thought he was Tony Hawks. Their skins were all lighter than Josh’s because their mother was white, but they looked just like their dad. You couldn’t move in their house for framed photographs. There was Josh when he used to have hair, as a young fresh soldier, looking very much like the ones in his neighbours’ windows; Josh becoming a member of Special Forces; Josh and the kids; Josh, Geri and the kids, plus all the horrible school portraits with gappy-toothed grins and scabs on their knees.

  It must have been clear he wasn’t going to get an answer out of me and, like a good Christian, he turned the other cheek. ‘So tell me, man, what you been doing?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ve been working in the UK the last few weeks. It’s been quite strange standing in the foreigners’ line at Immigration. But, hey, it pays the bills.’ Which reminded me why I’d come to see him in the first place. I reached into my bomber for the still-sealed envelope and pushed it under his thigh. ‘Get yourself a decent car, will you? And a wig.’

  ‘Thanks. But I think I can put it to better use.’

  I was sure he could. Kelly wasn’t the only one who needed the cash.

  He drove a while in silence, then leant forward for his cell from the dash mounting and passed it over. ‘Get to “Names”, will you, Nick? Look under B for Billman. They’re neighbours in Hunting Bear. Keep an eye on the house and stuff.’

  I hit a few keys and listened to the ringing tone. After a while an answering-machine kicked in.

  He shrugged. ‘We’ll try later. ‘ He turned his head and gave me a wry smile. ‘They’re probably at another of their community meetings, still complaining about the way we’re messing with their real-estate prices. Maybe we should give in, you know, let them have it cheap. No one’s ever going to buy a house with that kind of history. Let them knock it down and make a play area or whatever it is they want.’ It had taken a while, but Josh was slowly coming round to my way of thinking. ‘It might help Kelly in a funny sort of way. Some kind of closure, know what I’m saying?’

  He flicked the indicator to come off the I-95 at the next exit, towards the Outerloop, the I-495 around DC. Electric road signs constantly flashed out their instruction to report any suspicious terrorist activity. ‘What are we supposed to do with any unsuspicious activity we see, mate? Just keep it to ourselves?’

  He’d obviously spent the last few miles collecting his thoughts. ‘Look, Nick, this is my take on things. It’s nothing new, I’m just more sure. First of all, we’re not going to give up on her, whatever. Her acting out, she’s trying to cope. She’s coping with her family being dead, coping with the fact she feels abandoned. She’s coping with living with us. She’s got a lot weighing on that heart of hers, man.’

  I pulled down the visor to shade me from the glare. ‘I didn’t abandon her, she knows that. She knows we thought it was the best thing for her to come live with you.’ I knew I was sounding defensive.

  ‘You gotta take a look at it from where she stands. No matter how much love our home is giving her, it’s gotta be tough.’ He leant forward over the wheel to stretch his back. ‘She alienates people, you know she does. It’s her way of coping, Nick. She withdraws from us before we have a chance to do it to her. She’s insulating herself. We’ve got
to make sure she learns how to cope another way. A good way.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too much Dr Phil, mate.’

  He ignored me again. ‘We all have ways of handling stuff, OK? Me, I’ve got a devout belief in the Lord, I know that He loves me. You would, too, if only you’d let Him in. Let anybody in, come to think of it.’ He pointed a finger while trying not to cut up a truck. ‘You, you’re Mr Distractive – when things get a little too hot for you, you try to head off somewhere different, get busy, get funny, anything to get away. That Dr Phil gag, you’re still doing it – what you call it, cutting away? Yeah, you’re still cutting away, huh?’ He turned towards me and I took over looking out of the windscreen. ‘You know why you never look me in the eye, you never look at my face? It’s because you feel guilty, so you just do your little thing, you cut away.’

  I wasn’t cutting away, I was completely blanking out. ‘Load of bollocks.’

  His head shook slowly from side to side. A road sign announced we were entering Virginia. ‘The way it looks to me, she’s doing exactly what you do, cutting away, keeping a lid on things. She just can’t bear to let her feelings out – she’s scared of what might happen. She’s scared it might be like leaving the gate open in the zoo, so the lions and the elephants escape, know what I’m saying?’

  I shrugged a ‘maybe’.

  ‘Man, I know you were doing your best for her, I know there were outrageous circumstances, but what goes through her head at night? What does she dream about? It may be too late for you, but we gotta help her take the lid off. But, like, real slow.’ We came off the highway, taking the ramp right and following signs for Tyson’s Corner. ‘It’s going to take a long time, know what I’m saying? But we’ll get there with her in the end.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Sometimes I admired his unshakeable Christian certainty, but just as often it tipped me over the edge. ‘You had a word with God then, have you?’