Robert Bennett - The Company Man

Hayes sat back. “I think maybe,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” said Sookie. “If a man could learn how to control those things down there, whatever they are, maybe he’d be able to control the city. Maybe. Neat idea, eh?”

“Yes,” said Hayes, troubled. “Very fascinating.”

Sookie sniffed. “So. What you got for me, Princeling? What’s there that you can trade?”

Hayes shook himself and returned to the game at hand. “Merton’s buying up wharf property,” he said smoothly. “Thinking about importing, maybe.”

Sookie waved a hand. “Don’t give me garbage. Give me something good. You know I want something good.”

“John Flax died the other night,” said Hayes. “In Savron. The guards were in on it and they buried him in the basement.”

“Chicken feed. Complete chicken feed. If you want to show your face here again I suggest you pony up, son.”

“All right,” said Hayes. “You know that senator’s kid? The illegitimate one?”

“Ronald, I think his name is,” said Sookie. “Fathered on a Chinese whore not much older than a mayfly.”

“Yeah, maybe. Well, rumor has it… rumor has it he’s no longer… whole.”

“Whole?”

“Yeah,” said Hayes, and glanced down at his crotch and back up at Sookie. “Whole.”

Sookie’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?”

“Yes. Mishandled one of Moira’s girls. Things got ugly. Leastways, that’s the rumor.”

“You get that from Moira?”

He shook his head. “She’d never tell.”

“No. I guess she wouldn’t.” Sookie nodded. “Huh. I’ve been looking to get ahold of that senator for some time now.”

“Well, there’s your foot in. Hope it does you well, Sooks.” Hayes stood to leave.

“That’s all?” said Sookie, surprised. “You don’t want me to tell someone about how you want to see Tazz?”

“Oh, no. I know Sookie’s mouth isn’t big enough to help,” said Hayes.

Sookie smiled crookedly. “That’s so.”

Hayes turned to leave when the old man’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “You be careful, Princeling,” he said. “You got a disease in you. A new one, for you. I seen it before in others. I see it in your face. You’re pulling out all the stops because you don’t plan on coming back from where you’re going. If it’s the girl that’s doing this, then fuck her and forget her, I say.”

“And if it’s more than her?”

Sookie frowned. “Then you better be damn sure about where you’re going. You hear?”

“I hear,” said Hayes. Then he bade Sookie goodbye and walked through the tables to the stairs and the rest of his chores.

Six hours and 191 dollars later Hayes washed up on the sidewalk before a grimy little all-night diner in Lynn. He had crossed the city in one night, touching those in the know and giving them the message. He was exhausted and reeling from drink and drugs, but he felt he had accomplished something. He had at last made headway.

The smile faded from his face. He had torn free of the madness and the high now drained from his body. Loneliness welled up in him, diamond-sharp and silent. He felt lost among the small, winding night streets, populated only by strangers and stragglers who were dark and silent as they passed on the other side of the road.

Hayes staggered through the front doors of the diner and dragged himself up to the bar. The place was empty save for a few. A cop on his beat and a cabbie who was nursing a watery glass of orange juice. A thickset woman who sat in the corner before an empty plate and sometimes cried noiselessly to the notice of no one. A bent woman with dishwater-blond hair pushing a broom between the tables though there seemed to be no dust. Lonely survivors, left behind by the day before.

Hayes sat with his head in his hands and tried to ignore the voice in the back of his mind that wished he would die, this terrible thing, this wretched empty vessel that was unable to enjoy even the dalliance of sin. He felt ill. In that moment he did not really know what he had done that night or why he had done it. If his life followed any direction right now, he guessed, it was due to nothing more than sheer momentum.

The waitress came and took his order. Minutes passed and she came back with a plate of steak and eggs. To his weary mouth they tasted only of cigarettes and retch. The policeman left and a woman came in and sat next to Hayes and ordered eggs. She opened up a newspaper and read in silence. After a while Hayes dozed over his plate.

He dreamed of deserts and the lone moon seen through a roof made of iron bars, of the smell of horseflesh and the lightning flash of carbine fire on barren slopes. Then he dreamed of the city as seen from above, a handful of blinking lights grown along the edge of the Sound like cobwebs caught in a corner. He listened to the lights below and realized they had a voice, one voice speaking together. After listening for a while longer he realized the lights were weeping.

“Meal subpar this time?” said a voice.

He awoke. The woman with the newspaper was smiling at him over the top of a sheet.

“What?” he said.

“The meal,” she said. “I noticed you haven’t eaten much of it.”

“So?”

“Well then, it can’t be very good.”

“Why?” he demanded.

She faltered, then said, “I’ve just seen you in here.”

“Seen me? Where?”

“In here. You come here pretty often and eat the same thing, steak and eggs.”

“Here? I come here?”

“Yes.”

Hayes thought, then squinted at her and asked, “Why are you watching me eat?”

“I’m… I’m not.”

“You know what I eat here.”

“No, I just come in here sometimes and I… I see you, so I was just curious.”

“Curious.”

“Y-yes. I thought I’d make chat.” She looked down, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Then she stood and put down some money and walked away.

“No,” said Hayes as she walked out. “No, I didn’t mean to…”

She did not hear him. She went through the front doors and did not look back. Hayes hung his head. “Shit,” he said softly to himself. “Goddamn it.”

He cursed himself a while longer and then paid and hobbled out. He wasn’t sure what he would say to her if he caught up to her or even why he cared. In the end it did not matter. By the time he reached the street she was gone.

He walked past the Nail to the web of side streets that made his neighborhood. He did not go to the warehouse but instead went to a small shop across from it with a FOR RENT sign hanging in the glass. He took out his keys and opened the door and went past the empty front room to the stairs in the back and then up to the second floor. It was unadorned except for a mattress in the middle of the bare floors, lying perfectly in line with the window, which looked down upon the front door of his warehouse and all the small alleys that went to the back. He had purchased the shop for that very feature. He was almost sure that neither Brightly nor Evans knew of its existence, as he had bought it using one of his less prominent identities.

“All the old tradecraft,” he muttered. He leaned his head up against the glass and began watching. Not a soul stirred in the street. The bleak light of dawn began to seep through the sheet of clouds in the east. He kept watching and waiting. After the first two hours he wanted to sleep but found he could not.

When she returned to work the next day Samantha prepared the agenda and waited for Hayes to arrive. The world seemed to float by her as she entered her office, and she was unable to focus on any one thing. She was still living in the night before, she knew, how she had had to coax him as though he were no more than a teenager, and how after they had sat in comfortable silence, allowing the morning hours to slip by without a word. As she waited for Hayes she realized her every second was geared toward seeing Garvey again, and the murders and the many conspiracies seemed to fade to a murmur around her.