Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

R.J. sat back down without making eye contact, acting like he was straightening the crease in his khakis.

Despite the massive police presence, despite the assurances from the nation’s highest levels of law enforcement, a gunman who was executing people in the Rotunda of the Capitol yesterday was still on the lam as night fell for a second day. Darkness came and a sense of safety, of national security, fell with it.

His cell buzzed at 9:26. The top of his head nearly fucking blew off. He let go of the keyboard-he’d been clinging to it for so long it felt like a life raft-and fished the cell out of his backpack. “This is Carter and this better be fucking good.”

“Sully?” the man’s voice said. “You know one of the things I discovered about paranoia today? That thing assholes say at bars, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t following you’? You know, that, that, that’s actually true.”

“Hadn’t occurred to me,” Sully said. “So how you livin’, Mr. Waters?”

“I’M A LITTLEdisappointed, tell you the truth,” Waters said down the line, the voice clear and steady. Sounded like a landline, but Sully couldn’t be sure. You got into trouble trying to overinterpret tiny impressions into major facts, and he didn’t want to do that here. He just wanted to keep the guy talking long enough until he gave something away. Possibly gave something away.

“Welcome to America,” Sully said, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder, keeping both hands on the keyboard, typing furiously.

“I think my people should be saying that to yours.”

“Touché,” Sully said, “but you’re going to have to be more specific. Everybody comes to America, hates it, but never goes home. It’s like a bigger version of Washington.”

Waters let out a long breath. Like he was a smoker and was blowing out the cloud. “I thought somebody would have caught me by now,” he said. “I mean, how many dickheads do they have looking for me, about eight thousand?”

“I hear you,” Sully said, standing, waving both arms above his head, making a huge X, then making it again, trying to get somebody’s attention, anyone at all. “I thought that was you at the Motel 6 today.”

A short bark of a laugh.

“Sully, look now. If we’re going to talk, and I like talking to you, we’ve got to understand each other better. That hotel is for hookers and gangbangers.”

No one was looking. It was like he was doing calisthenics and nobody could stand to watch.

“Apologies,” Sully said, working to keep his breathing even. “I thought they left the light on for everybody. I figured maybe in reduced circumstances and all, you might, ah, be a lonely man in shirtsleeves, leaning out of a window.”

In desperation, he picked us his stapler and fired it at R.J., missing the back of the man’s head and his computer screen by inches, but hitting the framed picture of R.J. and Elwood dead center, shattering the glass and sending it clattering against the other tchotchkes in his cubicle. The man came three inches out of his seat, then turned, face going red until he saw Sully pointing his finger like a pistol, then pointed to the phone, then plunked back down, typing at knuckle-busting speed to try to keep up.

There was a sigh. Waters said, “‘Lonely men in shirtsleeves.’ You spent the afternoon brushing up on your Eliot.”

“Well, sure,” Sully said. “Thought you were trying to tell me something.”

R.J. was loping across the newsroom to Eddie’s office.

“I was, I mean, I am,” Waters said. Not stuttering, more confident than this morning. Not apologizing about anything. “I was thinking, I mean today, and I decided it’s a good thing we met. And that we meet again. We have things to discuss. You can tell my story for me. It’s like it was meant, you know? I hadn’t thought about this part of it.”

Eddie was talking into the phone, standing up, looking out from his office all the way over to Sully, rolling his extended index finger around and around, telling him to keep the man talking.

“Don’t know how you’re going to do that, being on the run and all,” Sully said. “Maybe you check in with the feds, then we can sit down and have a long chat. Your mom. Remember? You were going to tell me about her.”

Breathing, down the line. Labored. Was he walking? Pissed off? “Sully, okay. You’ve got to understand this. It’s key. Only the hunted run. I, me, I’m not the hunted. I’m not running. I hunt. I am the hunter.”

“The hell does that even mean?” Alexis said, looking over her margarita at him, three or four or five tiny crystals of salt sticking to her upper lip. “The most hunted man in America thinks he’s the predator?”

Her eyes were bright, despite the hour, despite the waning light of the outdoor café, and the shadows that fell and swooped across her face, the waving branches of the trees in the courtyard and light breeze that came down Massachusetts Avenue. She was leaning forward over the ceramic outdoor table, her hair undone, falling over her shoulders. Jesus Mary and Joseph, she was something. You could just feel her presence coming across the table. The tilt to her chin, the way she’d kicked off her shoes when they sat down, the direct nature of her gaze. Every now and again the breeze would catch and lift her bangs over her forehead and they would flutter down again, a little more askew each time.

“We’re talking a delusional psycho,” Sully said, settling his cycle jacket over the back of his chair, bringing it home out of habit, even if the bike was back in the garage at the paper. “So I wouldn’t put too much into it. He’s right about the hunting thing, though. Our boy has stalked some game.”

“How so?”

It was closing in on midnight and they were sitting on the brick courtyard of La Loma. The Mexican place on the Hill. A converted two-story row house in a block of them. They were drinking margaritas on the rocks but the food hadn’t come yet. The FBI had insisted that agents drive him home after the phone call from Waters, thinking he might be obsessing on Sully, trailing him. Since Alexis was still at the paper, and since she’d given him shit for not calling her the previous night, he’d invited her to come for a late dinner and then shack at his place.

On the short drive, Sully called Josh, who was happily glued to Cheerleaders on Top , or whatever he was watching that was sending Sully’s pay-per-view bill into triple digits. Sully reminded him not to leave the house and if he heard clambering from the backyard, that was just the feds’ sniper getting to the roof. He tried to pass this off as something that happened, like it was a regular thing, worrying the boy was going to freak. Josh just said that was awesome. Also, reading Sully’s mind, he said that his mom had called but not to worry, he hadn’t told her anything.

By that time, the car was moving up deserted Mass Ave., the yellow and red lights of La Loma gleaming off to the left. They pulled to the curb. Sully asked the agents if they wanted to eat. The crewcut on the right, chewing gum and staring straight ahead, said they’d wait in the car. Pissed, you could tell.

The tequila was going straight to his head. It was the best feeling he’d had all day.

He dipped a tortilla chip in the salsa and let it flit across his mind just how walk-into-a-wall gorgeous Alexis was, looking at him like this, just the two of them. He hoped she wouldn’t go back abroad. He’d been thinking all summer, ever since she came back, of a way he could communicate this without saying it outright.

“Hunting, tracking game, if you’re running? You can’t hear nothing,” he said, munching. “You can’t hear what your deer or whatever is doing. You also can’t see. You miss things. So. Whenever possible, you stop. You listen. You learn where your prey is and where it’s going. Then you track until you can get a clear shot.”