Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

“SEE! THE MAN HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US, KNOWING WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD! THEREFORE, HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO PUT OUT HIS HAND TO TAKE FRUIT FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, AND THUS EAT OF IT AND LIVE FOREVER.”

All the words were written in black ink except for HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO… LIVE, which he wrote in red. When he was done and the ink was dry, he folded the paper into quarters, slipped it into his back pocket opposite his wallet, and returned the original to his bag.

Mickey checked out of the Pegasus Motor Lodge around five-thirty and drove to a residential street he had scouted earlier. The houses were large and irregularly kept. Many of the lawns were overgrown and the trash cans filled with beer empties. Mickey assumed the renters here were mostly students from UT. He parked the car and unloaded the stolen bike from the backseat. As he rode he started to feel the rush, the anticipation of close contact.

Mickey took his time, careful to obey traffic laws, making a full stop at intersections. He hated people on bikes, especially kids, who thought they could drive on the wrong side of the road or blow through stop signs, expecting licensed drivers in cars and trucks to look out for them. It was still summer and still muggy, but a light breeze cooled his aging skin a bit, especially when he was in motion at twenty-five miles per hour, and when he arrived at the grocery store he dismounted and turned the bike around. He didn’t know the area well and wanted to make sure he didn’t become so lost in the getaway that he’d have to backtrack past the grocery after the cops arrived. If there were any cops at all, of course. One could never tell just how a target might react.

He entered the grocery, which belonged to a chain, although not one of the Texas-sized conglomerates with the travel agency and the copy center and the bank. At the registers, he turned into a small deli with four booths and a tiny pizza oven and a machine that made milk shakes. Four people stood in line ahead of him, and he stared indifferently at the menu board while he waited. When it was his turn he made sure not to put his hand flat against the stainless steel counter (not that they had his fingerprints in their database, or that fingerprints were even used much to ID people anymore, what with DNA being so much more reliable, but it didn’t serve any purpose to be leaving the ghost of his palm behind everywhere he went) and he ordered a turkey club sandwich, no cheese, and stood in another line by the register while they built layers of mayonnaise and sliced meat and lettuce and bacon on a slice of white bread.

His sandwich arrived at the cashier at the same time he did. A boy around seventeen asked him what he’d ordered and Mickey described the sandwich to him and produced a ten-dollar bill. The boy counted out his change, and when he handed it over, Mickey cupped the kid’s fingers in his hand, making sure that he felt the scales of Mickey’s raw, chapped skin.

“Are you Christopher Bel Geddes?” Mickey asked the boy casually. He knew the answer. He only wanted to get the kid’s attention. Most of the time when you talk to them, teenagers aren’t listening to you.

“Yeah?” The kid looked up.

Mickey leaned in and spoke in a low voice. The kid leaned forward as well until his lobe was near enough to Mickey’s mouth that Mickey could have bitten it with an attacking lunge. “Tell your father that he might be innocent in the eyes of the law,” Mickey said, his breath hot in the boy’s ear as he shoved the folded drawing roughly into his apron pocket, “but he still has to answer to the Hands of God.” He said this last bit in something like a Southern accent – Haints of Gwad – partially as a nod to Byron Bonavita and partially because, when he practiced it, he liked the menacing way it sounded to his own ear. He called that voice “the Sinister Minister.” It reminded him of De Niro in the remake of Cape Fear.

Christopher Bel Geddes was still bent over the counter when Mickey grabbed his sandwich and spun toward the door. He walked with his head down out into the grocery store, behind the row of fifteen registers, which counted off in backlit numbers above the cashiers’ heads. He walked in the direction of the double sets of automatic doors, which did their best to lock the cool air inside.

“Sir?” a voice asked. Mickey didn’t look up.

“Sir?” the voice said again. It was following behind him. “Can I see your receipt, sir?”

Mickey stopped. He didn’t even know if he had a receipt. Christ, they weren’t going to pinch him for shoplifting. Talk about an undignified end. He wished he had left the sandwich on the counter. Taking it was just cocky. He turned around. The security guard was small and his tie was too short and his uniform pinched the fat around his middle. “Um, I paid for it,” Mickey stammered. “They put it in this paper bag.”

“They should have given you a receipt.” The guard turned as if he wanted to lead Mickey back to the deli. Christopher Bel Geddes appeared from behind a stack of Coca-Cola, his leather-soled shoes sliding on the worn linoleum floor. From a hundred feet or so, his eyes brought Mickey and the guard into focus.

“Hey!” the kid yelled.

Mickey ran, his right shoulder checking the second set of sliding doors when they wouldn’t open fast enough. The security guard yelled after him. He saw his bike. No, screw the bike. He’d never get it started in time. He ran as fast he could across the parking lot and back down the road by which he’d come. Already he was winded. He had no chance of outrunning a seventeen-year-old kid. A cloud of shouting gained on him from behind.

He turned a corner and leapt awkwardly over a low chain-link fence, sprinting through someone’s yard. He climbed the fence on the other side and found a gulley that separated backyards between rows of homes along parallel streets and ran down the middle of it, his feet heavy against the mud and the weeds. This was too dangerous. They might see him from the side street.

Mickey jumped another fence, this one in the middle of a block, and ducked behind a yellow plastic playhouse to rest. He didn’t have a gun or even a knife with him. He had change in his pocket and, what else, the damn sandwich. He still had the damn paper bag in his hand.

“Hi,” a little girl’s voice yelled in his right ear. Mickey jumped, but he was too tired to run. There was a kid in the playhouse, maybe six years old. Her black hair was thick, and her new, grown-up teeth were too big for her pea-shaped head. She was leaning out the window and her head was beside his and she was giggling. “I’m Talia. I’m an eye doctor,” she told him, and with a pudgy finger she pushed the lower lid down and away from his right eye and leaned in until her irises were this close to his. Mickey didn’t swat the girl’s hand away, didn’t do anything to make her shout or cry or yell.

“Are your parents home?” Mickey asked. Then he added, “Dr. Talia.”

The girl nodded, still pinching the bag of skin under his eye. Of course her parents are home, Mickey thought. Parents don’t just leave the house when there’s a six-year-old in the yard. Good parents, anyway. “What about them?” Mickey asked. He pointed to a big white house with aluminum siding next door.

Dr. Talia shook her head. “They don’t have babies. Mommy says babies would crank their lightstyle.”

“Great. Thanks.” He waved good-bye and duckwalked into the neighbor’s yard as Talia called good-bye after him. She ran into her own house, no doubt to tell her mother about her new grown-up friend. Mickey made his way around the side of the garage and pushed a window screen in. They had a second car, thank God, an old Audi. He lifted himself up and squeezed through, landing on an empty rubber trash can. Using his own keys to expose the wires, he had the Audi started in less than two minutes. The remote for the garage door was on the passenger-side eyeshade. He backed out slowly.