Guardians of the Secret
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All Rights Reserved
15.
Michael realized he was again sitting at the back of a group of people as someone spoke. This time he wasn't just being coy. There were two sets of mourners at Sara's funeral, those he didn't want to talk to and those who didn't want to talk to him. The first set consisted of Nimé and the second Jack and the others.
When Jack heard about the accident, he immediately thought of the caller's threat. He was devastated and furious. Hadn't he warned her. It would never have happened without Michael. Even after he was told it really was an accident, it was hard for him to shake his anger. He was cold when Michael called with his condolences. When Michael asked about the children, he told him they were all going to stay with his parents and he had to go.
They were all sitting together listening to the priest delivering a eulogy to Sara. A liberation theologian, he was wiry and intense and obviously cared about Sara and her work.
"Words were so important to her. As the bible says, 'In the beginning was the word.' And what of the end? We are left with what was said, what was unsaid. Her words. Our words to her. Now made final. Not if we take it to heart. Then it will continue to live.
"We see as if through a glass darkly. But if our lives were bathed in light crystal clear, we would see no better. For the eye that refuses to see clearly into our own lives is the same eye that is trying to see God's beauty. The heart that is closed to the injustice and the suffering of others is the same heart that is trying to open to God's joy. Sara knew the truth of this and strove to be open, caring and whole."
Michael came to honor her and to say good-bye. He knew right away neither were possible. He was stuck with his angry last words to her, "I'll see you around." He didn't want to be where he was. He didn't want to be listening to what he was hearing. It wasn't what was being said. They were good thoughts being offered up by a good priest. He still didn't want to hear them.
A different life and he might have been the one up there offering consolation and hope. It was painful and useless sitting here in agony. Not useless he reconsidered as he thought of Christ in pain and agony. He just couldn't do it, couldn't go through it to something greater. The only thing he could do was climb down off his personal cross and go catch and kill the people that did this to Sara. He couldn't even do that. He was stuck with it being an accident.
* * *
Michael spent the rest of the day considering his options. There were several. Yeah, get drunk or get drunk or get drunk one wise ass voice said. Sit down with your memories and your feelings and talk with her a wise voice said. Be haunted by phrases like "I'll see you around" and "It's madness". He would settle on one only to have the other two elbow it out of the way.
He drove around for hours. He drove by the station, he drove by every place they ever shared. By evening the family would be gone and he could go to Sara's.
He had no reason to go there. It was the blessed spot where he shot her kid's toy and killed their relationship. It was another destination and he didn't want to run out of them. The house was dark when Michael pulled up in front of it. He sat in the car and looked at it. More bad feeling. He thought about driving away, but got out of the car instead.
A wind had come up and was blowing hard at intervals. He walked around the house and surveyed the backyard. He half expected that the package would be gone, a phantom from a bad dream chased by morning's light. It was still there laying near the trees. He looked lost and driven at the same time. The sound of the wind in the trees mingled with the whispered voices of remembered conversation going on in his head. Bits of the eulogy and his argument with Sara and her family. "This is madness." "He's crazy." And then the cops sendoff. "There's no they, Michael."
He went back to his car and got his shotgun out of the trunk. He returned to the backyard.
The voices continued. They got no louder than a whisper, but began to overlap faster and faster like a stretto in a mad fugue, finally getting stuck on the phrase, "I'll see you around." As the phrase repeated, Michael played with the heft of the shotgun as if he were weighing his life. His finger tightened on the trigger. He quickly raised the gun and fired toward the trees.
The shotgun blast was followed by a sharp percussive explosion as the entire hillside lit up in a white phosphorescent glare. Tree fragments flew everywhere. Michael was knocked off his feet. He lay there as the reverberation of the explosion died away. He listened. No voices, just the sound of the wind.
He got up and walked out of the yard. A white corvette with its lights off was slowly driving by the front of the house. As he appeared it suddenly peeled out and sped down the block. Michael jumped into his car and started after it. The Corvette accelerated like a rocket down a winding road. Michael raced to catch up. Rounding a bend, he spotted the Corvette.
"You like accidents. Let's have an accident."
Michael jammed the accelerator and hurtled toward the Corvette. He caught up with it on a curve. He could see the exact spot on the car where he would ram it, running it off the road. In his mind's eye he was already smashing the car and the driver in it, but he never got there. The Corvette hit a straightaway and pulled away. Michael pushed his car for all it was worth and his speedometer topped one hundred. He got no closer as the two cars came flying out of the winding road to the outskirts of Philadelphia.
The speeding Corvette swerved to avoid intersection traffic and went into a spin. Michael headed straight for it. A bus pulled out in front of him. He hit the brakes and skidded around it, and out of the way of oncoming traffic. Cars everywhere but no Corvette, until he caught a glimpse of it up the street disappearing into an alley.
Michael raced to the alley. He knew it had no outlet. The Corvette was parked near the end of it with the driver's door open. Michael stopped, grabbed the shotgun from the seat next to him and cautiously approached. He aimed the shotgun, but the car was empty. Michael surveyed the street. A walkway between the buildings was the only way out.
He peered into the dimly lit walkway. At first nothing but darkness. With the light behind him, Michael knew his silhouette was an inviting target. He quickly moved inside the walkway, pressing himself against the wall. He waited as his eyes acclimated to the darkness. The blackness resolved into a murky view of stairwells, piled boxes, mattresses and scrap junk.
Shotgun poised, Michael moved along the wall. He listened, but there was only silence. It was suddenly interrupted by the distant noise of people cheering coming from a bar down the street. Then silence again. Michael waited for a sound, a sign of movement. He had no patience for it. "What am I doing clowning around in the dark, this asshole killed Sara." Michael readied himself for a move that would draw fire.
A figure in the shadows behind a dumpster aimed a Swiss automatic pistol. Michael took a deep breath, and looked hopefully at his leg. In a half crouch he ran across the walkway, winding up in an inset doorway. He winced in pain, bracing for gunfire.
"Dead or alive!" he yelled out.
No response. Michael readied his shotgun. He poised to make a move.
"Try it!" a voice yelled back. It was a woman's voice.
Michael was stunned. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"What were you doing at Sara's?"
"Looking for Michael Flaherty."
"I'm Michael Flaherty."
"Bullshit."
"What do you want me to do, show you my ID?"
"Yeah, I've got an army of assholes trying to kill me. You're probably one of them."
"And you're probably full of shit."
Stalemate.
"Suppose I am Michael Flaherty."
"I hope you've got some answers."
"About what?"
"Russell Everett."
Michael reacted like she had said the magic word.
"There's a bar around the corner. If you're not there in five minutes, wherever you are, I'll be right behind you."
* * *
Michael entered the crowded sports bar and sat at a booth away from the action. He set down a distributor cap on the table in front of him and looked around the room. The crowd cheered as a team scored. Michael couldn't care less as he checked his watch. He impatiently toyed with the distributor cap. A waitress came up.
"What happened Michael, your car break down?"
"No, it's just a good luck charm. I thought it would bring me some company."
Michael checked his watch again.
"So much for good luck and charm," he said sarcastically. He got up quickly and headed for the exit. Tess suddenly appeared out of a crowd and Michael bumped into her as he passed.
"Hey dead or alive," Michael heard someone call out behind him. He turned and was startled to see Sara walk toward him. For a moment it seemed like a miracle and then a painful hallucination. She was dead and this was no time to be losing it, he thought as the woman neared him. But now he could see it was someone else who resembled her. Tess took his look to be questioning as Michael rudely pulled himself together.
"I was checking you out with the bartender."
"So?"
"He said you were trouble"
"So?"
"I told him I already had trouble."
Tess walked to a booth and Michael followed her. Tess sat down, Michael didn't.
"How do you know Russell Everett?"
"He's trying to kill me."
"What a coincidence. Get up!"
"What?"
"We're moving."
"Why?"
"Suddenly I'm a people person."
Michael forcefully grabbed Tess by the wrist and escorted her to a table in the middle of the room with a big screen tv in the background.
"Give me your purse?"
"Who made you God?"
"You want answers?"
Reluctantly Tess handed over the purse. Michael went through it, took out her gun and pocketed it. He pulled out a man's wallet.
"It's Everett's. I stole it, that's what I do, I'm a thief."
"Yeah and I stole the queen's tiara."
"Look jerk, my friend's been killed, and I've been up for three days, scared out of my mind trying to find you."
"Why me?"
"You know Everett. I heard you talk about him on the radio."
Michael began examining the wallet. There was a Virginia license issued to Russell Everett.
"You listen to the show?"
"I'm an insomniac, I don't sleep. You don't believe me, do you?"
"Not a fucking word. Big time war hero Colonel Russell Everett, you picked his pocket, just like that?"
Tess nodded.
Michael sorted through some receipts and credit cards. The credit cards were a dead end. Everett never used them. Sandwiched in between them was a matchbook cover. The Runway Cafe. It was hard to believe it still existed, it belonged so much to his past. Michael remembered the cafe and the small municipal airport it served. Perfect for short midnight flights that wound up in Central or South America. Everett arranged for pilots to use it to fly money and drugs in and out of the country. He preferred more remote airports like the one in Mina, Arkansas, but sometimes it suited his needs.
Michael turned the cover over. Written in pencil were the words "March-11/21".
"You're a great thief...or a fucking liar. How do I know Everett hasn't sent you to set me up?"
Tess pulled a gun out of her coat and pointed it at Michael.
"You know what this gun is?"
"Smith and Wesson .38."
"It's your Smith and Wesson .38."
Michael started to reach under his jacket.
"Go ahead," Tess said.
Michael felt for his gun, but it was gone. Tess handed him his gun. Michael was clearly impressed.
* * *
The two emerged from the bar as it began to drizzle. Michael got into his car as Tess retrieved a bag out of hers. He watched her. It was painful and fascinating seeing Sara as a different person. A very erotic different person. He felt that sudden intrusion of fantasy into reality that signaled the start of his sprees.
It was clear that he was in that sort of place. He didn't feel strange that he was having a sexual reverie about a woman who almost killed him, and who might yet as his professional caution kept warning him.
The reverie didn't last long enough to make him wonder how an unbalanced guy could try such a balancing act. He was thinking about Everett and March by the time Tess got in. Michael glanced at her car.
"You better do something about the car. In this neighborhood somebody's going to steal it."
"So, I'll steal another one."
Almost amused, Michael started the car and drove away from the bar.
"March is Congressman Allan March from Texas. He's giving a speech in Charleston, and my guess Everett will be there. First I want you to have a look at some photos I've got, and then I'll find you a safe place to stay."
"I've got other plans. I'm going with you."
"I don't know you from anybody. You proved you're a great thief and you could have shot me in the bar and didn't, but maybe it's just you don't like shooting people in bars, I don't know."
"If it helps you any I'm not particular."
"You still could be anybody."
"Anybody could be anybody, don't you have any instincts?"
"Lots of them. Some of them say crazy things like never mind knowing who you are or caring. Or maybe that's just me talking. Maybe my instincts are a hundred percent right and on a nice quiet peaceful day I could actually hear what bright thing they have to tell me. Only I don't remember such a day. And all I can hear is just go with this woman. In the meantime you could be working for Everett for all I know."
"You've got to be kidding."
"No, how did you meet him?"
"Through an acquaintance that was looking for a good time. He thought Everett might join us in a threesome."
"What did you think?"
"He was military and not the least bit interested. I pretended to give it a try."
"What about the other guy."
"Nice dresser. Nice attaché case. Maybe something nice inside. My luck he was carrying about three hundred thousand dollars. I knew I'd stolen a problem. So I made some calls. Coming out of the phone booth I could see I was being followed. I knew right away I was going to end up dead over this, so I just dropped the case and ran."
"Did they get it?"
"Yeah, but they kept looking for me. There and everywhere since. I was afraid to go back to the apartment, so I called. Kit wasn't there."
"Who's Kit?"
"A guy I do jobs with."
"In the mob?"
"No."
Michael frowned in disbelief. "Sorry I asked."
"He's Japanese. He used to be involved over there, but they had a falling out. He killed one of the head honcho's sons in self defense."
"You trust him?"
"I do. You work with someone with everything on the line, you can pretty well judge."
"Pretty well hasn't worked that well for me."
"We had a contact number in case of an emergency. There was no message. I'm pretty sure he's dead. Meanwhile they got their precious case back and they're still trying to kill me."
"And you don't know why?"
"They're professional assholes, how should I know?"
"Maybe you could be holding out on everybody."
"You don't believe me."
"Don't take it personally. I don't even get the people in my own head. Anything else in the attaché case?"
"Just some papers."
"What papers?"
"I don't know."
Michael looked at her incredulously.
"Hey I'm not in the paper business. I just glanced at them."
"What about your friend?"
"We were busy looking at three hundred thousand dollars. I was going to show the papers to one of my contacts who's good on these sort of things, but I never got there."
"I'm curious, why did you steal Everett's wallet?"
"It's just a thing. Personal reason."
"What reason?"
"Leave it at that."
"You're a mystery."
"So's everybody."
"I don't have to trust everybody."
"You've got nothing to worry about. I'm not a long term threat. The word is I picked the wrong people, that's it cold. Nobody wanted that kind of trouble. For old times they offered to see me off with something uncut and a respectable funeral. So go easy, I'm the last of your worries."
* * *
Michael's loft was located on a street lined with small manufacturing businesses and warehouses. Michael drove down the block approaching his loft. His description to Tess of his research didn't quite capture its scope.
"What makes you think the guy with Everett will be in one of your photos."
"I've got enough lowlifes up there, I guarantee you'll get another chance to meet him."
Upstairs, Michael's lowlifes were already meeting somebody. Arens was inspecting Michael's massive collage of political extremists, the intelligence community and organized crime. He viewed the photographs with an almost condescending interest. He rearranged the positions of some of the photographs.
"Not bad, for an amateur," Arens commented to himself.
He picked out another photograph.
"Although he's not up on some of my best work."
Arens crumpled up the photograph and tossed it away. He stopped as he heard Michael's car in the street below.
Michael slowed down as he prepared to park across the street. Tess was suddenly uneasy.
"Keep going."
"What?"
"Keep going. Just humor me, at least drive down the block."
Michael reluctantly drove on and stopped.
"What's going on?"
"I feel sick, like when something is going to screw up. Maybe somebody is up there?"
"Trust me. If there is I'll know."
"What about trusting me?"
"This is important. Maybe you can identify Everett's friend."
"Forget maybe. For sure they know you're here and they know I'm here. We should get the hell out."
"This is ridiculous."
Michael angrily u-turned the car and drove back toward the loft. Tess was furious.
"Stop the car!"
Michael ignored her.
"Stop the car!" Tess screamed.
Michael continued on. Tess pulled a gun out of her coat and pointed it at him. Michael jammed on the brakes.
"Look, I've got the place wired. I'll know downstairs if somebody is up there."
"Yeah, and if he's got friends on the street we're into a shoot-out with some well armed flunkies. If I'm going to end up with my brains on the sidewalk, I want Everett to be in the crossfire. He and every other asshole I've ever met think they can squash me when the mood strikes, and all because they think they've got a monopoly on violence. Maybe they do. Part of me still wishes I could try to hide and wait it out. But I don't see it that way. You want him dead, we'll do it together. All I want from you is to point me in the right direction, and keep me alive until I get there."
"It's not that easy."
"Neither is the alternative. In fact I think you're just like me, you don't have an alternative. Otherwise you wouldn't be chasing someone with a gun into a dark alley. Whatever you're supposedly hanging on to, a mortgage, hope, justice, forget all that. You and I are going to drive down this highway, find Everett and kill him."
Tess' revenge wasn't exactly his, but the shared passion was intoxicating. He drank it in a moment and then u-turned the car and sped away from the loft. He drove on in silence. He had been here before, but this was even more intense. Tess had a kind of abandon that took him hundreds of miles of highway and week of hard drinking to achieve. She smiled at him like out of a dream.
"You've done this before. Right."
Michael's silence assented.
"Many times. Right."
Michael couldn't believe they were on the same wavelength.
"How do you know?"
"I picked it up right away when I got in the car with you. There's a certain feel to it. Going off into the sunset with someone. That's romantic. This is more like trying to be the sunset."
"A bloody one. What makes you think I can do this?"
"I heard you on the radio. You know this guy and you don't quit."
"Don't kid yourself, I quit. The only activity I got for years was throwing caution to the wind. Now I keep up on my skills. I've still got a bum knee and it's not like being on the street. I've got stuff that obviously worries Everett, but I couldn't hang him with it."
"So we'll shoot him."
Michael smiled.
"We've either got a lot in common or you're just a great actress."
"Does it matter as long as you get what you want?"
"My trouble is it's beginning to."
"Well here's to new beginnings."
Tess leaned over and kissed Michael on the cheek.
copyright © 1998 by Cary Shulman
All Rights Reserved