Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

“So you’ve met Edwards,” Hannibal said.

“We saw him from across the street,” Harry said through clenched teeth. “She was following him like a lovesick puppy. Him and his designer damn suit and his candy apple red fucking Corvette with its faggot-sounding vanity plates.”

Hannibal fought to control his breathing. Instead of surprise, he forced a smile onto his face and released a little chuckle. “Faggot-sounding plates,” he repeated, as if it was the funniest thing he’d heard that day.

Harry joined in the laughter. “Yeah buddy. Unless the other girl’s name is Kitty. Is that it?”

Hannibal never had to answer. The natural tunnel formed by the motel and the restaurant it faced carried one soft word to them. “Harry?” At the sound of his name he stood faster than he would have liked, then affected a relaxed attitude Hannibal recognized.

“I’m going to get back there. She needs me.”

“I think she does,” Hannibal said, extending a hand. “Go take care of her. And take care of yourself.”

Monday

The telephone waited until almost nine-thirty to ring. Not bad for a Monday morning. By then Hannibal had run his five miles, showered, brewed a pot of coffee from his stash of Hawaiian Kona Fancy beans, eaten his Cheerios and pulled on his working clothes. Now he sat at his desk dealing with the paperwork the government uses to keep the small businessman in his place. Of course, most of those papers were really streams of electrons now, and he was finally becoming pretty comfortable maintaining his records on his computer. Steam curled from his second cup of coffee and a Quincy Jones album sprinkled the room with soft but pulsing background music. When the phone rang, Hannibal smiled at it for waiting until he was ready for it.

“Mister Jones? It’s Janet. Can you come out here? I need some help. Can I hire you?” The words poured out of her mouth like water from a burst dam, jolting Hannibal into rigid attention.

“Slow down a bit and tell me what’s wrong.”

“He’s here,” she said. Keeping her voice low didn’t cover the panic. “Ike is here. He showed up here at work not much after I arrived. I’m afraid he’ll do something.”

“Where are you exactly?”

Janet was having trouble catching her breath. “I’m at the Springfield DMV office, over on Franconia. He keeps coming in and going out again. Now he’s just standing there by the door, staring at my cage. I just know he’ll do something crazy.”

Hannibal thought about facing Janet’s abusive husband again. It was not a fun thought. “What about the police, Janet? Has your office called them?”

“He hasn’t really done anything. And I’m afraid he might go crazy if some uniformed stranger was to push him. He knows you.”

Hannibal was about to protest again. Then an image came to him, an image of Isaac Ingersoll on a rampage in a crowded government building. Somebody was sure to get hurt if the police handled the situation, maybe Isaac worst of all. And clearly Janet didn’t want that, despite all her husband had done to her. He was not there out of hate, but out of a confused love. If Hannibal was more likely to be able to defuse the situation, he really had no choice but to go. He might be able to end the possibility of violence with a little talk.

Still, before he slipped his jacket on and pushed his Oakley sunglasses into place, he shoved his Sig Sauer P229 into the holster under his right shoulder.

Hannibal slipped between the glass doors of the Department of Motor Vehicles. The ambient noise level was enervating, but he couldn’t pick out any words in any conversations. The counter had to be thirty feet long with maybe a dozen people standing behind it. The line of customers stretched the length of the counter then curled on itself, once, twice, six times. Almost every person in that line was talking, in one of four languages, not counting the small children who have a language all their own. The tone of that mass of indecipherable chatter was negative. It was a room full of frustration, and Isaac Ingersoll stood at the back of it, against the wall counter littered with forms to fill out. Match and powder keg in easy reach of one another.

But what Hannibal saw in Isaac’s face was helplessness. He stared across the wide room at Janet who stood behind the eye test machine, working hard at working. When she spotted Hannibal, a huge breath escaped her, as if she were inflated with tension and his presence allowed some of it to leak out. Then her eyes went to her husband, and worry lines crowded her face. Hannibal followed her line of sight to Isaac who seemed to receive her psychic wave because he turned his head and saw Hannibal for the first time. His jaw set and his hands curled into fists.

Hannibal kept his hands in front of him, one holding the other, and walked toward Isaac. Watching the bigger man’s eyes, Hannibal pushed himself closer, inside the danger area, less than arms’ length away. His neck craned and he stared up into that big Nordic face, showing no tension.

“Could we just talk a minute?” Hannibal asked. “Maybe outside? All these people don’t need to be involved in this.” Then he turned his back to Isaac and eased away toward the door. A part of him anticipated a fist at the back of his head but he could not look back, could not offer Isaac an option.

He pushed through the door and dim fluorescence was replaced by the scorching fireball hanging in the eastern sky. Hannibal walked a few steps toward it. When he turned, he stood in a corner of the parking lot. Isaac was no more than five feet away, raising his fists. But the sun was stabbing his eyes. Hannibal kept his hands and his voice low.

“Isaac, I think you’re ready for a serious fight,” Hannibal said. “And you know what else? I think you could beat my face in.”

Isaac shifted his feet into a more aggressive fighting stance. “You got that right, asshole.”

Hannibal’s first goal was accomplished. He had the man talking. The next step was to get him thinking. “You know, your wife could have called the police and told them you were harassing her. Why do you suppose she didn’t do that?”

While he talked, Hannibal floated lightly on his feet, keeping himself turned in such a way as to never offer Isaac a perfect target. Anger tightened Isaac’s face as he moved to try to reach the right position to land a solid punch. “You her new man,” Isaac said. “You tell me.”

“You know it’s not like that,” Hannibal said with a smile. “Your wife is my client and nothing more. She asked me to come here because she’s scared, Isaac, and trouble is my business.” Could Hannibal establish a token amount of trust? His Secret Service training told him that was the next step. He stopped moving and extended his right hand. “Hannibal Jones is my name.”

“Fuck you!”

Maybe establishing a was too much to hope for, but Isaac didn’t sucker punch him while his hand was out. The anger was under some sort of control. “Okay. But I can assure you of this much. Your wife doesn’t have another man. In fact, I’m sure she never has.”

“Bullshit!” Isaac’s fists were shaking with rage now. “Why would she leave me if she didn’t have another man?”

It was time to commit. Hannibal rooted his feet and let Isaac get close enough to crush him. “Look at me Isaac, I’m six feet tall and I’ve been kick-boxing since high school. Got years of police training. And if you really wanted to you could kill me with your hands.”

“Damn straight!”

“Your wife is five foot two,” Hannibal said. “Maybe, what, a hundred ten pounds? Think about what happens to her body when one of your big hands hits her.”

Isaac’s fist actually whistled through the air, down toward Hannibal’s head like a hammer. A sidestep allowed it to blow past, slamming down on the fender of a Taurus. He turned away from the impressive dent, following Hannibal with his eyes.