Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

Capo was sitting at Doc’s counter. The lights were off. Doc was in the kitchen, making corned beef hash and scrambled eggs in the dark. London was sitting in a car outside Matty’s house; Crystal was across the street in the Lumber Lodge. In front of Capo, on the counter, was an open laptop. A cell phone was plugged into the laptop. Capo was certain of four things. He knew that Locs had rented a blue Chevy Cruze, because she’d paid for it with her agency credit card. He knew that Locs was in town, because at the baseball game Kurt had described to him the woman who had taken the cartoon from him, the cartoon that Kurt himself had originally taken from the cartoonist. He knew that Locs would find Matty, or Matty her. He knew that Matty would, at the last minute, suffer a failure of nerve, again, and that he would walk away from Locs, again. After that, there were a number of possibilities. Locs might decide to murder Matty. Locs might decide to murder Ellen. Locs might decide not to murder Matty or Ellen but instead to murder their marriage by calling Ellen at the Lumber Lodge and telling her that she and Matty had seen each other again. This was why London and Crystal were stationed where they were stationed. This was why the laptop was open in front of Capo: if Locs used her cell phone, the laptop would tell him where she was using it, and if someone called the Lumber Lodge, the call would be routed into Capo’s computer and he could answer it on his cell phone.

But there was another possibility. That Locs would do something else, something even Capo hadn’t yet thought of.

Meanwhile, Capo watched, on his laptop, the barroom of the Lumber Lodge as seen through the camera he’d placed in the eye of the moose head. There was no sound because the microphone wasn’t working, again. Every year Capo, Doc, and Crystal replaced the camera and the microphone, and every year the microphone stopped working immediately after they replaced it. Capo had wanted to put the camera and the microphone there in the first place, not because he thought the Lumber Lodge worth spying on, but because he didn’t want his and his agents’ bug-planting skills to get rusty. Anyway, a little after eight, Capo watched Crystal get off her barstool, walk across the room, look up the stairs, and then walk back across the room to her barstool. From there, she gave the moose head a thumbs-up. This wasn’t as conspicuous as it seems: Capo had noticed that the bar patrons tended to gravitate toward the moose head. The drunker the patrons, the greater the gravitational pull. They stared at the moose head, toasted it, talked to it, confided in it; once, a man had propositioned it sexually. The microphone hadn’t been working that time, either, but the man had made a series of vulgar hip thrusts so there was no way the moose head, or Capo, would mistake his meaning. Good Lord. Sometimes, Capo wished that the camera didn’t work, either, or that it had been placed in a different stuffed animal head, in a different bar, in a different town.

But regardless, Crystal’s thumbs-up meant that the Danish cartoonist was safely in his room above the Lumber Lodge.

A little after that, he heard from London: Matty was safely inside the old stone house.

A little after that, the phone rang. The call was not from Locs’s cell phone. It was a local number. But it was from someone calling the Lumber Lodge. Capo raised his eyebrow at Doc and then answered the phone. “Lumber Lodge,” he said in Ellen’s voice.

“Yeah,” the voice said. It was a woman’s voice. It was muffled, slurred. The woman sounded drunk. But it was Broomeville. That could mean it was lots of people. “I just saw your fuckin’ husband. With that Lorraine chick. The bird woman. You know who I’m talkin’ about. In a blue Chevy Cruze out on Route 356, by the power lines.”

“Who is this?” Capo asked in Ellen’s voice. But the woman had already hung up. Capo hung up, too. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene: Matty and Locs together in the car on Route 356. Matty telling her the inevitable. Matty getting out of the car. Matty walking home. Locs sitting in the car, and sitting there, and sitting there, not believing that she had let this happen to her again; trying to figure out whom to blame; trying to figure out where she was going to go; trying to figure out what she was going to do next.

Capo opened his eyes and called London. London was already in his car. He was closer to Route 356 than any of the rest of them. Besides, he had helped make this mess. It made sense that he be the one to clean it up. Capo gave London the information, told him what to do. Then Capo hung up. Five minutes later, just as Capo was about to tuck into his eggs and hash, London called. Crying. Really crying. Not as though he was afraid he had done something wrong, but as though he knew it. The poor boy. Perhaps Capo had been wrong after all to recruit him. This was the dangerous part of recruiting among the young. You never knew how much they weren’t going to change when they got older.

“Drive away,” Capo said. “Calmly, calmly. The roads are treacherous. Don’t worry. The county coroner is on his way.” At that, Doc took off his apron, withdrew his black bag from under the counter, and ran out the door. Not many people knew that Broomeville County even had a coroner, let alone that Doc was that coroner, let alone that that’s why Doc was called Doc.

That was that. London had killed the wrong woman. Locs was gone. Who knew where? She was an excellent agent; they probably wouldn’t be able to find her. They would probably have to wait until she decided to come back to Broomeville again. In the meantime, Capo, Doc, Crystal, and London would keep watch over the cartoonist. No one else in Broomeville would know his true identity. But what about Matty? Doesn’t Matty know who the cartoonist is? Capo asked himself, and then quickly answered, No, Matty doesn’t even know who he is. Matty doesn’t even know who I am.

That decided, there was nothing left for Capo to do except eat Doc’s eggs and hash. He did love Doc’s eggs and hash. He often rhapsodized about them during his time away. “Broomeville! Oh, I’ll never forget the eggs and corned beef hash at Doc’s!” he would say. Since his return, he’d spent as much time there as his other job allowed. In fact, he had been there that Saturday morning, seven years earlier, drinking his coffee, in the company of his clocks, looking out the window. Matty had just gotten out of the car and walked away, but Locs was still sitting inside. Capo knew what she was doing: she was trying to figure out whom to blame; trying to figure out where she was going to go; trying to figure out what she was going to do next. Capo finished his coffee, walked outside. Locs’s head was thrown back against the seat; her eyes were closed. He tapped on the window and her eyes sprang open and she gave him a calculating but still furious look. A very promising look. Although also a very dangerous look. He gestured with his hand for her to roll down her window, and she did that.

“What the fuck do you want, Lawrence?” she said.

“Lawrence,” he repeated. “Some people call me by another name.”

“Creep?” she suggested. “Asshole?”

Capo tried to ignore that. “I am sorry my brother”—and here Capo paused, pretending to search for just the right word—“ dumped you. But you should have known something like that was going to happen.” When Locs didn’t say anything to this, he asked, “What will you do next? Where will you go?”

“What do you care?” she said. And then, in a different, lonelier voice, she said, “I really don’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” Capo said. “I know some people who will take you into their home.”