Чак Хоган - The Standoff

He was certain that there would be no discourse. There was nothing in that for him. Talking was his profession and he knew better than anyone else its limitations. It could take you only so far, and Banish had been there, and he had come back, and here he was now.

He looked at the floor. “We will begin to allow relatives and friends up one at a time to record messages to the family,” he said. “Those urging surrender and peaceful resolution will be broadcast to the cabin. Those which do not, won’t. There will be no conversations.”

He found his chair and managed to sit at his desk. He pretended to go about his work. Blood said, “Fair enough” — to no acknowledgment from Banish, not even an answering glance upward. Then he turned and left without having to be asked.

Alone, Banish allowed himself to stare off again at a fixed point somewhere beyond his consciousness. The telephone was right there on his desk next to him. He recalled the few times during the past two years, the low times, when he had dialed the number in Cincinnati just to hear a familiar female voice say, “Hello.” The last time, following a prolonged silence on both their ends, Molly had said fearfully, “John?” and then hung up. He could see her in a long nightshirt, standing back from the telephone in a darkened kitchen, looking at it, wondering if it would ring again. Short, layered hair, lighter than it used to be, as in the hundreds of different photographs he had commissioned. Her left hand near her mouth. Her mother’s garnet the only ring she still wore.

He felt for the thick band on his finger. He pictured Nicole in a white wedding dress and veil. But he could not see her smiling. Despite all the photographs, his only daughter’s face was suddenly unclear to him. He could not conjure her up. As hard as he tried, he could not get his image of her to lift its lace-covered arms and raise that veil.

Fagin turned away from the Salvation Army truck, hot tray of food in hand. He was one of the last to be served that evening. A bonfire crackled strong in the cleared area before the trailers and most of the marshals and agents were eating their slop there. At a single picnic table separate from the rest he saw a man eating alone. Fagin went there.

He set his tray down without Banish so much as looking up. On the tray was a piece of thick-crust bread covered with chipped beef in a thin, lumpy brown sauce, a serving spoon’s worth of beans still settling into its rounded section, a separate cup of sulfur like bouillon, and a small square of cornbread.

Fagin said, “Shit on a shingle. Jesus H. Christ.”

Banish sat up a fraction then, no longer able to ignore him. He was bent over his plate, eating efficiently like a kid in his last days of BT, as a light wave of laughter went up from the direction of the blaze.

“Didn’t think you’d OK a bonfire,” Fagin said with his mouth full, gesturing with his fork.

Banish swallowed, still watching his food. “No reason not to,” he said. “Good for morale. After six days, fatigue becomes a factor.”

“Yeah,” said Fagin. “Six fucking days. That World Financial Center thing, how long was that?”

“That was an overnight,” Banish said.

An agent came up then with papers for Banish, who looked them over and initialed each page. He returned to his plate and started in on the beans.

Fagin said, “So, you married?”

Banish stopped chewing. He stared at the table. “You don’t read the papers?” he said.

Fagin gave a small grin of concession. He cut into his food. “Separated or divorced?”

“Waiting for annulment.”

“A Catholic.” Fagin nodded. He had guessed that, long ago. “Funny because you don’t seem to me like the marrying type. And also funny because, I guess you could say, now my own marriage is hanging by a fucking thread.”

“Maybe it’s your language,” Banish said.

“No,” Fagin said, “that’s the part of me she likes.”

Fagin let a smile surface, and then even Banish broke down and bared some teeth. Fagin shook his head amusedly, then looked at his food again and soured on it once and for all, dropping his fork and knife onto the tin plate and pushing the thing away except for the cornbread. Fucking disgusting.

“We met at a Dodgers game,” he said. “She was working in their front office there, still does.” He looked up at the top of the mountain, orange with the last of the dusk. “In fact, tonight’s our seventh anniversary. Yeah.” He nodded. “I’m thinking about spending it up in a tree. Sitting up in the branches pointing a sniper rifle at some fucking guy I don’t even know, holed up in a dink-water shack on top of a fucking mountain in the middle of nowhere fucking Montana.”

He was shaking his head slowly in disgust, wiping an already clean hand on the front of his uniform shirt. He wanted to spit, but could not from the table. It was his upbringing. “Now she wants a divorce,” he said. “She’s younger than me, couple of years. She’s white. It catches me a lot of shit. But who knows, you know? I’m not around much. You know how it is, the job. Maybe she’s fucking a ballplayer.” He looked down then, thinking he had gone too far. He didn’t want to look weak. “Maybe,” he said matter-of-factly. He was concentrating on one finger of his right hand, his trigger finger, dry and pinkish on the underside, rubbing as though to get something off it. “I’m gonna need an outside line later on.”

Banish was looking across at him. “OK,” he said.

Fagin nodded, looking back up, then skyward again. “What’s with these fucking stars?” he said, meaning to change the subject. “Jesus. It’s like Vegas.”

Banish nodded. “You get used to it.”

The bonfire snapped loudly and they both turned their attention toward it. The blaze had lost some of its strength, blowing more white smoke than before. Fagin’s men were obviously lingering at that point, done with their meals and just shooting the shit, hanging around the bonfire to kill time and delay the inevitable return to duty. Fagin let them. This brief fire was their whole Saturday night and he wanted his men to have it.

He saw then the rookie cop crossing in front of the bonfire and heading toward the mess trucks, alone. He noticed that Banish saw the cop too, then turned right back around to the table. He seemed angry, maybe with a bit of surprise. Then it seemed as though he was reconsidering it or thinking of something else. Gradually he came to look heavy-eyed, staring down at the table. He might even have looked sorry. It was a strange look for Banish.

“That rookie cop,” Fagin said with a jab of his chin. “What’s his name?”

Banish was looking at his plate. “I think, Kearney,” he said.

Fagin nodded. “There’s a story there. The short version is: A couple of my men were making noise over dinner last night about you Fibbies, and also a little about how you yourself were handling things here. Just talk, right?” Fagin leaned forward, pointing toward the fire and grinning wide. “Kearney here was the only one who stood up for you. With all the GS grades on this fucking mountain, the only one willing to take on the entire nail-chewing, bad-ass U.S. Marshals Service SOG was him. A traffic cop from North Bumfuck. I don’t know — tough, or just shit out of brains? What do you think?”

Banish gave no response. He was staring at the square of cornbread left on his plate. He seemed to have been saving it, but now he looked as though he didn’t want it at all.

Fagin was about to ask him for it when another agent came rushing up to Banish’s side. Coyle, her name was, the librarian from the command tent.

“Sir,” she said, talking fast. “Agent Banish. We received a transmission signal from the mountaintop and a voice on the CB. I think it’s Ables, sir. He says he wants to talk to you.”