Method 15/33 Page 11

  So that’s what you do all day. How predictable.

  I guess we’re back to a safe routine. All snug and comfy, aren’t we now?

  Bleach, Asset #36. Right on time. Tomorrow we go.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SPECIAL AGENT ROGER LIU

  You might choose to believe this, you might choose not to. For sure, this part is too fanciful, perhaps too magical, for any FBI field report.

  Sometimes, and it used to be more frequent, I like to disappear. Say a meeting ended earlier than expected, and I wasn’t required to be anywhere at the moment. I could call, say the office, say my wife, Sandra, or my hard-knuckle partner, Lola. But perhaps, I might figure, I could take this gift of stolen time and slip away down a cobblestone alley and into a little Italian restaurant I know has been there forever. If, for example, this early-ending meeting were in Boston, that restaurant might be called Marliaves, set on a hill on the edge of Downtown Crossing. I think it’s been there since they invented bricks.

  Perhaps I might coil tight in a black booth, my cell phone at my hip on the seat, untouched. The waitress would bring me a menu, but I wouldn’t need it, for who would need to scour such a pedestrian item in stolen time. I am free here, untethered, and my divinity in this moment gives me a clarity as to a simple desire. “I’ll have the gnocchi al dente and a Coke, please.” The waitress soft shoes away to summon from some suspended place, my hot plate.

  I love this feeling, no one in the whole world who might want to find me knows where I am in this very second. I am powerful. I command the world. No one can say I can’t be here, for even I had not intended it. This gift, this free time. I might fall into a void between the universe’s theoretical strings and remain forever in a gravity-defying pit.

  I’d learned the power of hiding at age thirteen, but when I have these stolen moments of hidden peace, I surely don’t allow my mind to wander to those wretched memories, nor the wretched day that shaped my whole life, my career. So, we won’t go there even now—now when I tell you of my blessed stolen moments.

  Sure, I’d love Sandra to be with me in these times of hiding, but that would be impossible. They’re never planned, and she’s busy on some tour, I’m sure. And no one is missing me anyway. I suppose I could have taken on more cases, jumped ahead with other work, called my mother, a friend, finished some nagging errand. Or, maybe all of those things would never get done anyway had I been struck by a bus after the meeting; but since I wasn’t struck by a bus, I must be on borrowed time, gravy time, extra-frosting time. So I won’t call and I won’t work. I’ll just sit here with my pasta and my soda and I’ll stare into the restaurant’s shadows or linger, listening to the couple in love in the next booth.

  At the end of my life, I’d like to splice together all of these moments into one reel. I’m sure if I did, the splicing would reveal that one stolen moment was no different from the last or the next and so on, because I swear every time this happens, it’s the same place mentally, just me, myself, sitting here smiling at the freedom of living in this exact moment and not one soul changing that perspective. Could be Marliaves, could be the reservoir in Manchester, New Hampshire, my hotel bed in Atlanta, the streets of Soho, or the park in Kentucky with a view of one brown horse and one tan horse. Always the same place for me: internal peace.

  Of course, I can acquire this feeling of peace because I’m not on the run. I don’t need to hide from anyone, except myself, except dire memories. If I were on the run, well, that would be a different story. Or, if I had something truly awful to hide, then in that case, I’m sure I wouldn’t be sitting all sedate in some restaurant, ordering up anything, let alone al dente.

  In my line of work, I’ve found there is a spectrum of criminals. In one extreme, there is the mastermind megalomaniac who leaves nothing to chance, no fingerprint stains, no tire treads, no strand of hair, no footprints. No witnesses. No accomplices. No nothing leading to nothing. In the other extreme, there are the bungling fools who might as well broadcast their crime in real time. In between, you have your garden-variety knuckleheads, who get a lot right, but get some critical pieces wrong, and on these, we pounce.

  In the Dorothy M. Salucci case, what with the information Boyd called with, we had a bonafide extremist on our hands, of the bungling kind. And so, this is the part I bring you to, the part you might choose to believe, or choose to dismiss. Keep in mind, reality is often stranger than fiction, and so while you might be inclined to think the following impossible, it might serve to remind that some investigations are indeed solved. Whether the result is positive or negative is irrelevant to the fact of solving—also, the impression of positive or negative is, of course, subjective.

  “Mr. Liu, you ain’t gonna believe what I got to tell you,” Boyd said.

  There I was standing outside Lou Mitchell’s in Chicago’s loop, having left Lola to do her bidding on my breakfast plate.

  “Yeah, what’s up, Boyd?”

  “You ain’t never gonna believe this, Mr. Liu. Hardly believe it myself. Ah shit…”

  Silence.

  “I got to call you back,” he said and hung up.

  As you already know, I went back into Lou Mitchell’s and found Lola eating my toast. After the whole ordeal with Big Stan, and Lola and I had walked to the park, Boyd called again.

  “Mr. Liu, I’m so sorry. So sorry to have hung up. You ain’t gonna believe this.”

  “Go on, Boyd, I got all day.”

  I didn’t really have all day, but I could probably listen to the sweet whistle in that chicken-farmer’s voice for hours. Sort of reminded me of my grandpa, before everything went to hell.

  “Mr. Liu, I’m standing in my cousin Bobby’s kitchen outside Warsaw, Indiana. I suggest you get on down here.”

  Boyd proceeded to tell me he had driven about an hour from his home to Warsaw, Indiana, to pick up some specialty feed for his chickens. “I tell you, had the hood a’ my car not blown up cuz the latch broke, I mighta never been able to give you this information. God, He bless me when he broke the hood of my car.

  “Mr. Liu, I know the only thing, other than a new latch, that was gonna help me get my feed home before the rain hit—I got it piled up in the back bed and have no tarps on me—was to go on inta’ a hardware store and get me a good roll a’ Gorilla tape to hold the lid on my engine. That stuff’ll hold a moose to a tree. So there I am, minding my own damn business like any good Christian son at the town hardware, and holo, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Here he was, Mr. Liu, there was my van buyer, standing in line.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No, Mr. Liu, no sir, not a wink. I was behind him, and he was too bugged out to notice no one. In fact, the clerk had to say, ‘scuce me’ about three times before he moved ahead in line. Man was far off to some other place in his mind. But wait, okay. Cuz there’s more, uh-huh.”

  “Go on, Boyd. Go on. But wait, when was this?”

  “Just ‘bout hour-ana-half ago. Right after he paid and left, I threw a twenty on tha’ counta’, told ‘em to keep tha’ change, hurried out, taped my lid up quick, watched him drive away in my van, and drove myself to a drug store I know down the road. It has a pay phone. That’s when I called you first. I walk around with your card now, and I’m so glad I do. Anyway, listen, I had ta hang up cuz, guess what, here comes your man, again. He’d parked on the otha’ side of the building and he was going in-ta the pharmacy. It’s one a those old-school pharmacies, Mr. Liu. They just sell the prescriptions. No food section. No big Pampers section. Can’t you track him now by his doctor? Maybe don’t need to though, cuz listen.”

  “Wait, wait. Did he see you at the payphone?”

  “Ain’t no way. He didn’t see me there and he didn’t see me at the hardware store neither. I stayed a good distance behind because I knew you’d want me to, Mr. Liu. Wouldn’ta done you no good he saw me see him. He mighta flee, right? At the hardware store, I know he ain’t seen me ‘cuz I stood low and stayed behind a big ol’ boy in
a red-and-black hunter’s jacket. So your man there, he was buying duct tape and also a shovel, and a roll a’ tarp too. That’s concerning ain’t it, Mr. Liu?”

  “A bit, Boyd. And you say he didn’t see you at the pharmacy either? Did you see him come out of the pharmacy?”

  “No sir, I took off. Drove around, looking for another pay phone. I surely didn’t want him seeing me. I shoulda followed him, you think, don’t you? I’m so sorry. I jus’ didn’t want him to see me. But wait, wait, there’s more.”

  “Go on,” I said and starting thinking, pink bear.

  “So I’m driving around looking for another pay phone and damn I tell you, pay phones are harder ta’ find than you think, Mr. Liu. Anyway, I suddenly rememba my cousin Bobby. I mentioned him to ya, yeah, his boy play for Indiana University, right, you rememba? You asked about the Hoosier plates?”

  “Yes, Boyd, I remember. Go on, please.”

  “So, I rememba Cousin Bobby, he live ‘bout half-an-hour from the downtown in another town, takes so long cuza the dirt road and all and he got a big ol’ cow farm. I was thinkin’ I’d drive on into Cousin Bobby’s to use his phone, plus he’d let me park in his tractor barn to cover up my feed ‘fore tha’ rain hit.

  “So there I finally get, right on into Cousin Bobby’s, and out he come, smiling his fat face farmer smile, and he says the strangest thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He goes, ‘Damn Boyd, I was just about ta’ call ya. I just got back from checking the outfield, past the ridge, and saw your van parked on the outskirts of the old school’s field, under a willow tree. Why’d you leave it there?’ ”

  “I didn’t believe him until he took me up there. And damn, Mr. Liu, there’s my maroon van, Hoosier plates still on her front and her back. I told Bobby we had to creep back real slow, backwards and all, to make sure ain’t no one saw us. And that’s exactly what we did. Two grown men walking backwards through the pasture. We sittin’ in Bobby’s kitchen right now. We shakin’, Mr. Liu. We damn shakin’ in our bones. Bobby’s got a couple-a rifles, and we can go take care a’ this for ya, if ya want. We ain’t called the local boys yet, we want to do whatever you need, Mr. Liu.”

  “Just sit tight. Give me your address. I’ll handle this. We’ll be right there. Do not move from Bobby’s kitchen.”

  The damn suspect was out doing his errands all peaceful, as if free, as if on stolen time. Now we’d know whatever he bought at the hardware store and the pharmacy and we’d have all of the video evidence in those places and likely in between. Now we had his van, and I was pretty damn sure he was hiding out in the old school house Boyd so casually mentioned. We had him dead-to-rights. Well, I thought we had him dead-to-rights.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DAY OF

  “La, la, la, la, la, la, la

  La, la, la, la, la, la, la…

  Know that you could set your world on fire

  If you are strong enough to leave your doubts”

  –Kerli, “Walking on Air”

  I read once or heard once that a human can drown in just two inches of water. I had water, Asset #33, which I used on Day 33. And hence, the full name of my plot, “15/33.”

  I woke as usual at 7:22 a.m. Asset #14, the television, told me this, as did Asset #16, the radio. I made the bed as I always did and waited, sitting on the white coverlet until 8:00 a.m. for breakfast. At exactly 7:59, just on time, the floorboards rattled, and thus approached my punctual jailer. He unlocked the door and handed me the tray with the chipped toile china plate—chipped because I purposefully dropped the thing one day before—for fun. Blueberry muffins from the Kitchen People. And, of course, the milk, and the cup of water. I hate blueberries, but the butter-sugar top looks good.

  “Thank you.”

  Whole extra water routine.

  He left.

  The bored conductor yawns as he waves his wand through rote motions. Awake! This orchestra will soon play the rock version of a practiced hymn; a solo crowd will be shocked. Ratchet up the pace, maestro.

  After the field trip to the quarry, which at the time I consciously blanked from my memory, and up to this day, Day 33, I had peppered my regular routine with screaming and crying fits, all for the sole benefit of my captor’s weak ego. In addition to these well-planned spells of emotional acting, I truthfully increased my internal resolve. I also sped up the timeline. I had planned on waiting two more weeks, two more rounds of Kitchen People, so I’d be beyond question in my calculations and practice. So I’d have plenty of water. But what with the trek to the pit of horror, I chose to cut to the finish. I allowed three days to pass so as to ease him back into a safe routine and reduce his agitation, trick him into a sedate trust, by giving him what his demented state needed: wailing, crying, a subject who treated him like an Alpha, moon-eyed him from beneath his knees as a person of power, a mighty man rising from the earth, a pillar, a ruler, a Pharaoh, the only king of my world. Fucking inbred.

  Tricking someone into thinking he has power is the ultimate power play.

  The execution of my plan would have to wait for the delivery of lunch on Day 33 because 7:22 a.m. - 8:00 a.m. did not afford enough time for the set-up. I ate the muffin quickly and waited until 8:30 for his return. Sitting on the edge of the mattress after my meal, I flossed my teeth with thread I’d pulled from the hem of the comforter. Mashed muffin crumbs beaded in a saliva chain on the make-do floss, as I forced the string in and out of the tight joints of my teeth. Moving from molars to incisors, I did find it curious to be so fixed on the blood my rough dental care produced.

  I’ll need to see the dentist when I’m out of here.

  I found it humiliating to have to perform such private work in a bedroom—how uncivilized to treat my sleeping space as a bathroom.

  I’m better than this.

  I checked my nails, displeased with jagged cuticles. Waiting. Preening and waiting.

  Fortunately, he fell into my trap and came on cue.

  Strike the rumbling kettledrum.

  He opened the door. I handed him the tray.

  Whole wash my face, body, teeth, and drink from faucet routine—this time by just splashing water. I wasn’t about to use the nasty washcloth anymore.

  The orchestra shifts closer to the edge of their seats, gripping strings and filling lungs. A violin joins the drum to heighten the passion. Anticipation crawls up the spine of the stiff-backed pianist.

  I waddled back to the room. I considered this phase of 15/33, successfully completed, check.

  The minutiae of this day is so ingrained in my mind movie. Microseconds of actions and observations are burned so deeply I practically see them play out now: seventeen years of replay. When he thrust me back into my confines after the morning bathroom trip, the iciness of his grip on my forearm was so cold I thought he might stick to my skin, like lips on an icy glass. Slowly I craned my neck to see a stain on his chin, stuck within the stubble he’d failed to shave. The yellowy blotch looked to be egg yolk, which I presumed he’d horked down after giving me my muffin and before picking up my tray.

  He gets protein in a hot breakfast but gives me empty calories in a cold pastry.

  I wanted him to have the decency to wipe his face before being in my presence. I wanted him to have the grace to apologize for breathing his hot stench around me, for clouding my air with his BO and halitosis, for thinking he could enjoy a meal while I was in the same house as him, for having no warmth in his touch, for not seeing the plan unfold around him, for his blindness, his stupidity, his existence, and his past, a past that made me a victim—trickle-down torture. I wanted that yellow stain to not exist. I wished I’d never seen the gooey mass on his blackhead-filled, dry-skin, lazy face, but it was there, and I was there, and hard work had to be done that day.

  He’s out of my hair for a good three-and-a-half hours. Get to work. Phase II.

  I really didn’t need three-and-a-half hours. I needed perhaps an hour for the set-up. With the extra time, I
practiced. I must stand here. I stood there. I must drop this then. I pretended to drop a cord. I must pick this up and push, right away. I practiced with the floorboard. I must unhook this as I leave the room. I didn’t practice this last part for fear of squandering my coup de grace, my grand finale, my triple insurance for death.

  The hour approached. If I were a ballerina, I’d be on point, my toes, my legs, my whole body in a stiff cement posture. The child growing inside me turned; his foot moved across my belly. Five toes and a heel were visible from him pressing within. I love you, baby. Hold on. Game time.

  A fast wind rustled through the treetop outside the triangular window and in its wake, the sky darkened, and a sudden shower fried in a flash.

  The team of flutes sounds like swarming bees, the violins are in a fury, kicking up a cyclone, the grand piano is on fire, the ivory practically pounds to dust.

  Minutes later, the sky remained gray and dripping, not fully giving up on rain, but not raining outright either. If the air had been warm, the day would have been steamy, like summers in Savannah at Nana’s house. But since the air was cool and we were on a non-exotic, flat farm, the wetness was the kind to chill bones, crack marrow.

  My son will not be born here. He will not enter the world, cold and damp. My child will not be taken.

  My condition, this condition, propelled me to action. Because I was a full eight months then, I could not afford to physically attack my captor, even though he’d given ample opportunities. I could have jabbed a dagger of broken china or the sharpened end of a TV antenna into his neck. I could have dismantled the baseboard and beat him with a bedpost. Trust me, I thought of all of these options. They were ruled out though because they would require agility and lunging and jumping, abilities I lacked in my late condition. Besides, I might miss. I could not do the necessary deed entirely physically, and I did not want to stress the baby with a foolish attempt. Instead, I used as many assets as I could, the power of physics, basic biology, systems of levers and pulleys, and unbridled vengeance.