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  “I’m sure you’re absolutely correct, Stan. Is there anything else you can tell us about him? Any tattoos? Did he say anything at all about where he was from, where he went to school, anything to help us?”

  “For starters, he was a prick. Second, dumb as that box of oil you’re sitting on. Couldn’t fry up no bacon. Third, big fat liar. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t talk to no one. Unsociable motherfucker. I couldn’t squeeze one fact out for you. ‘Cept maybe he was a punctual psycho. He’d show up literally at 5:00 a.m. and leave at 3:00 p.m., punched on the exact click of the clock. I recall this in calculating his hours for Linda. Punch clock had it dead on, opening shift and closing shift, each of the three days. He said one thing that stands out. When he showed up at the back door, he says, ‘I have a thing about timing. I’ll show up every day for you on time. But I must punch out exactly at the end of my shift. Call it OCD. Call it what you will. I am always on time. I have to be.’ That’s what he says to me. Friggin’ weirdo.”

  “Stan, that’s real helpful. You think he’s ex-military or a vet?”

  “Ain’t no way idiot-man was in no army, Marines, no air force, no navy. No way. I served my time in the army and plenty’a boys come in here to work after their tours, and not one of ‘em like this guy. Plus, he didn’t care about his body none. And while I got no room to talk, most-a’ the military men I know, care some, at least a little. His arms ain’t never seen no day of lifting no weights. You can tell this in a man. He’s just some crazy cock who has to be on time or he’ll wig out or something.”

  “Stan…” I started to say, but Stan swiveled his torso toward me, pointing his spatula in my face. I leaned back, away from his thrust; Lola, however, leaned in. Stan ignored her, for it was clear she was but a fly in his kitchen. They’d probably make a good pair, the two of them; Stan might have been Lola’s match, if she were in to such things.

  “Oh hell, lawman, he was a crazy son-of-a-bitch. I remember something. He had a nervous tick. Would blink his eyes a lot if you confronted him. Real annoying like. So this plus the gotta be on time thing, I think he really did have OCD.” Stan paused, blinking his eyes furious at me as a demonstration. “Yup, all’s I remember. That’s it.”

  Lola leaned back on this new intel. I reeled around in my mind where this tidbit might lead us. I’m sure Lola questioned what we could do with this information. I’m sure she doubted it would help at all. I felt the density of doubt, for Lola was usually right.

  After rummaging through ten different boxes in the basement with Linda, we found the correct W-2 form for a “Ron Smith.” We faxed it to headquarters, and as expected, the records experts soon confirmed it was a fake name with a fake social security number. So fake, they didn’t even run it through the database. “Liu, you should know by now that social security numbers don’t start with a 99, unless this man is from the fictitious town of Talamazoo, Idaho.” And they snorted away in their special brand of dorkish, dark corner, fluorescent light, office laughter.

  Back outside, Lola and I walked from Lou Mitchell’s into the heart of Chicago’s loop. We crossed the Chicago River, taking the pedestrian’s path over an ornate, orange, arched iron bridge. The water below glowed Caribbean green, and ferries and water taxis glided in a harmonious chaos. Sightseers, lawyers, tourists, children, late-night jazz clubbers stumbling home, and stock market runners in piss-yellow jackets teemed about, the whole lot of them bumping into each other on their way to wherever, as though silver balls in a pinball machine. Lola and I kept a steady, slow pace amongst the bustle. We walked along to stand before the Sears Tower, both of us reflecting and silent, thinking separately about the morning’s developments.

  We’d been together five years at this point, and you might as well call us equals, even though our pay grades were different. I knew when she needed quiet, and she knew when I did. Although it kills me to say this, Lola and I worked in a synchronized tandem more refined than me and my own wife. Even our steps that morning clicked in synch, our stride the same, our gait, our breaths, our pauses and head shakes, our very beings choreographed as though a long-running tap-dance team on Broadway. This may have been the walk in which I admitted to my inner nagging that I was a terrible husband. I was never home. But would Sandra be disappointed in me if I quit? Would I be able to walk away from this personal hell, this obligation I’d imposed upon myself, partially as punishment and partially to rectify a past and grave error?

  Down into the belly of the loop we sauntered. Tall buildings on each side of Madison Street made parts of our stretch as dark as twilight. When we came to the jewelry merchants on Lower Wacker, the raised train roared over our heads. In this part of town, the pigeons outnumber the office workers, who populate the area two streets back. We continued on, passing over Michigan Avenue to enter Grant Park. It was here that Lola and I sat upon a green bench. I crossed my legs in contemplation. She spread her own, jabbing her elbows on her thighs and hanging her head between her knees.

  My phone rang. It was Boyd again. I was expecting him. I stood and walked in circles, listening to him out of Lola’s straining ear.

  I returned to the bench and mimicked Lola, our heads hanging between slumped shoulders. After a solitary minute, I exhaled loudly to call our two-person team to attention. I had something to report.

  In my line of work, I’ve heard many crazy, insane fact patterns, combinations of reality that while real in individual parts seem incredulous when smashed together. Take for example the case in which a Romanian-run circus abandoned its old dancing bear in a densely wooded forest in Pennsylvania, the same place we thought a kidnapper had taken a ten-year-old girl the month before.

  Tracking human scents, for this is how the declawed bear associated food, for three miles of concentric loops, she literally fell upon our kidnapper, suffocating him with a mama-bear paw on his windpipe. The ten-year-old girl, too horrified, tired, and beaten to respond, simply rolled to the bear’s feet, sobbing. She later told us that in her delirium, the bear appeared to her to be Mary the Mother of God, with sunrays shining off her divine face and all around her pink cape. The bear lowered her head and with her snout nudged the girl to climb aboard. A motorist found the girl half-conscious on the bear’s back, the bear whine-growling down the center of an old logging road. The girl wore a pink leotard; the dancing bear wore a pink tutu.

  Thinking on Boyd’s fresh story while I sat on that Chicago park bench, I heaved a sigh of disbelief, as though filtering all the air in the city through my lungs could compress his words to a truth I could believe.

  In our slouched state, Lola twisted to me, and I did the same to her. “You ready to tell me what Boyd said,” she asked.

  “Get the car. We’re going back to Indiana. We need to leave an hour ago.”

  “Damn, Liu, I knew that shit-stinking farmer knew more.”

  “You have no idea. You’re never going to believe this one. Get the car.”

  “Pink bear?”

  “Pink bear.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DAY 25 IN CAPTIVITY

  There are days in your life that are horribly eerie but in hindsight are fabulously comic. Darkly comic, but comic nonetheless. There are people in your life who seem wildly strange, and they too in hindsight are actually darkly comic—they also remind you of your advantages, because they set the bar so low, breathing in your atmosphere, as if entitled to do so.

  On Day 25, I had a visitor who I, even as I write these words, snicker in the memory of—this man. Maybe God and his black butterfly felt I needed a break from misery, so they sent me a good laugh, in hindsight. In hindsight. During the ordeal, I spent my energy fighting back fear, constantly flipping a stubborn switch in my brain to off.

  There I was late afternoon, the dusk beginning to unfold over the house. My dinner delivery would be coming any minute. As I did every day, I gathered my tools of practice, even the ones I conjured out of air, and placed the physical and invisible implements in their rightful places.
I sat on the bed, a palm to each knee, back straight, my belly soaring out like a plump, stuffed teddy bear.

  Creak.

  Creak, crack, closer.

  Creak, crack, loud now.

  Metal inserted, turning, seal broken, door opened.

  No food.

  “Stand.”

  I stood.

  “Come here.”

  I went to my jailer. He put a paper grocery store bag over my head.

  “Keep a hand on my shoulder, one on the railing. I didn’t tie the bag so you can watch your feet down the stairs. Now come on. And don’t ask any stupid, fucking questions.”

  What the hell? You make me walk down stairs with my vision mostly obscured? What am I going to see at this point that would matter? Rephrase, what do you think I would see at this point that would matter? I know I would find an incalculable number of assets, perhaps a path to escape, but you don’t know I know that. Ape.

  “Yes, sir.”

  So, as it was, I garnered no information about the world below the landing outside my jail cell, except that the stairs were wood with a faded middle from a missing runner. The floors on the lowest level were thin oak planks, and certainly scuffed, the varnish all but scraped off, from years of what looked like heavy use. We turned a few corners and entered a bright room. The light surged through the bag. He removed the bag.

  “Here she is,” said my captor to my captor.

  What is going on? What the hell? Am I losing my mind? There’s two of them. What?

  “Well, brother, she looks perfectly healthy to me. She’ll fetch us a pretty penny,” said the duplicate of my captor to my captor.

  Identical twins. This is a family business. Well dip me in molten metal and bronze me in this spot, my mouth agape.

  “Come, sit here, pleasant panther,” my twin captor said to me, gesturing with a femininely extended hand to a chair at an ornate dining room table. His nails were longer than a man’s nails should be. I noted his purple paisley scarf.

  An odd sound eked through when the tinkling piano of Tchaikovsky met my ear, coming from a warbling record player on a lace-doily-covered service hutch capping the end of the table. Mauve and green floral wallpaper busied the space into an outdated Victorian, the décor antiqued further with a dark and shiny dining set. This room’s veneer, almost black and densely waxed, with creepy roses on the wall. Twelve high-backed chairs with pink-flowered cushions surrounded the table. Casserole dishes steamed in the middle. The heat was cranked to hell.

  “Pretty panther, pretty, pretty panther, come here, sit next to me. My name is Brad,” said Brad, said the twin. There was a nasal, high pitch to his sing-song voice. His long, tasseled scarf fluttered with his exaggerated movement.

  So, this is Brad. Why is he calling me a panther? Brad must be the source of the scarf I gathered when I had the ultrasound.

  Brad and my captor were an exact match: same face, same hair, nose, eyes, mouth, same height, even same potbelly. The only difference: Brad was clean and crisp; my captor, soft and mangled.

  I sat in the chair next to Brad. He placed his featherweight hand lightly on my elbow; it felt clammy even through the cloth. I’m sure Brad limp wrists a loose handshake. Mother would hate him. “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have a firm grip on your hand,” she’d say. “And people who finger your fingers as a greeting have no spine, no substance, and no soul. You may, you must, dismiss them.” He laid a large cell phone on the table, out of my reach.

  “Brother, you didn’t say our precious panther was such a cool diva,” Brad said, as he placed a dinner roll on my plate, another in the toile. I will obliterate these plates someday.

  “Brad, let’s just eat and get the girl back upstairs. I don’t understand why you insist on eating with these things. They’re as good as dead anyway,” says my so very uncouth captor.

  “Tsk. Tsk. Brother, so gruff all the time,” Brad said and then looked at me. “So sorry, growling panther, he has no manners. Don’t mind him, he’s just a brute. Let’s enjoy our dinner. I’m so tired. I flew in from Thailand yesterday. Been at the dentist all day. Old Grumpy makes me stay at a flea-trap hotel in this Godforsaken town. So, so tired, panther. So tired. Leaving on a flight tomorrow to… Oh panther, tsk tsk to me, going on about my fool self. I bet you just want to eat. Tee-hee-hee.”

  What movie did I watch with Lenny, my boyfriend? Ah yes, Three On A Meathook. The son and mother and father, all killers. A family of psychopaths. Tchaikovsky morphed into the screeching soundtrack of a stabbing knife through a shower curtain.

  Brad uncovered a pile of sliced meat on a platter and placed two pieces on my plate. I hoped the meat was veal, for the slab looked and smelled as such, although I could no longer trust my senses in this den of insanity. Brad also served a pyramid of glistening green beans, a dollop of mashed potatoes, and a delicate trail of glazed carrots. He cut the meat into tiny bites, leaning in to my side as though he were my doting new mother.

  “Panther lady, my brother and I, perhaps just I, are, am, wondering,” and here his high voice switched to a forced, low grumbling, like he was talking funny-serious to a toddler, “why you glare at him with such mean eyes?” He continued in a quick return to a higher voice, “What? You don’t like the food he gives you? Tee-hee-hee. Don’t worry, we don’t let him cook. He couldn’t even hold a job flipping bacon at a diner! Remember, brother? Remember when you tried to get away from your Brady-poo? How’d that work out for you?”

  Brad blinked at my captor.

  “Ol’ fatty has to work with me. He’s too dumb to do anything else. Anyway, anyway, I prattle on. You probably give him mean eyes because he’s such a fat slob.” Brad nudged my shoulder to laugh along with him. I exerted a short, “Ha,” only to catch my captor’s stare, a cold, dead stare, which was scattered with incessant blinking. This was the first time I noted him blinking, blinking, blinking.

  “Shut the fuck up, Brad. Let’s get this over with.” Blink. Blink.

  “Now, brother, relax. The girl should enjoy a nice widdle dinny-poo. Right, panther?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir?!” Brad howled. “Yes, sir?! Oh brother, oh brother, she’s a little baby, cute baby panther.”

  Brad turned to his plate. My hands were on my lap. He took a bite, his eyes darting to my clenched fists. He scowled, losing his tittering lightness in a flash of squinting eyes.

  “Pick your fucking fork up and eat the veal I made you. Now!” Brad screamed in a deep, loathing voice. “Tee-hee-hee,” he added with a returned high tone.

  I picked up my fork. I ate the baby calf.

  “Now, brother, why is panther here calling me ‘sir’? Is this what you make her call you?”

  My captor slumped, shoving mashed potatoes into his open, chewing mouth.

  “Brother, brother. You’re never going to get over daddy-poo, are you?” Brad twisted to me. “Pretty panther, my brother here is very scarred. Our daddy, our sweet, sweet daddy, made us call him ‘sir.’ Even when we had the flu and were throwing up in our pressed pajamas, it was, ‘sir, I am so sorry for puking, sir.’ Oh, panther cat, guess what my sweet daddy did to my dumb brother once?”

  “Brad, if you don’t shut your shit-spewing mouth right now…” Blink. Blink. Blink, blink, blink.

  Brad interrupted with a deafening two-palm slam on the table. The glass teardrop chandelier shook as he stood to lean into a scream.

  “Oh, brother, you will shut up,” Brad said, wielding a pointing knife across the table while audibly sucking a shard of meat from his teeth with his tongue.

  My captor shut up. Brad sat down and scrunched his nose in a kitten smile to me.

  Hmm, strange dynamic. The feminine twin has power over the fat slob twin. I leaned a fraction closer to Brad, perhaps wanting to forge an unconscious partnership in his mind.

  “Brother, brother, brother, so touchy. Tsk, Tsk.” Brad said “touchy” in a higher octave. “Panther cat, listen to this, my sweet baby brother, he had
trouble keeping our daddy’s curfew. Oh Daddy, he kept his time on a military watch—one he had since he’d been corporal—and well, I was real good about being punctual. I was Daddy’s favorite. Naturally.”

  Brad said “naturally” while inspecting his nails, pleased with himself.

  “Anyway, dipshit here, well, he’d miss deadlines by a minute here, thirty seconds there, come in all huffin’ and a’ puffin’ out of breath. One night when we were both eighteen—we’re twins, you know. One night when we were eighteen, the day after high school graduation, in fact, Daddy sent him to get us some milk and Sanka from the corner store. Daddy says, ‘Son, I’m timing you. This is your test. You be back here at 0700 hours and not a second after. You hear?’ And my dear brother goes, ‘Yes, sir,’ which was the right answer. So boy goes running out the door. Me and Daddy watch him tear down the street, and Daddy gnarls under his breath, ‘He’s worthless. Slouch. Running like a moron.’ Something musta happen down at the store though. What was it, brother? What made you a whole two minutes late?”

  Pause.

  Brothers staring each other into death. Sweat pouring down my captor’s jowels.

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  Hatred between two men, twins.

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  I caged my belly with my arms.

  Blink. Blink. Blink.

  “Doesn’t matter anyway. My dear, dumb brother walks in the door, and Daddy taps his watch and says, ‘Boy, it is exactly 0702. You’re two minutes late. You’re spending a year in the brig.’”

  My captor dropped his fork. This time, however, he glared, no blinking, forcing all of his hatred on me, as though I was the one who sentenced him to the brig. It might have been because I had stopped eating, stalled enthralled, staring at Brad to feed me more of this story. I fought back asking, what brig?