Richard House - The Kills

Santo leaned back and downed the last of the beer. ‘It’s not what you want to hear, I know that. But everyone agreed. As soon as we heard there was an inspection we knew we had to do something. You understand? We were all of us working toward something, it’s not like we had a choice. The only thing we could do was destroy whatever records were in Howell’s office. Make some chaos. Divert attention. Kiprowski just got it wrong, that’s all. He knew what he was doing, but he just got it wrong. It was unfortunate, but he knew what he was getting himself into. He volunteered. Everybody had too much to lose. I know how that sounds. But that’s exactly how it was.’

* * *

Rem called Cathy from the motel room and sat on the bed counting folds in the curtain while he waited for her to answer, one wall a yellow curtain dressed with sour streetlight. How much time had he spent in such rooms: a room with two beds, a door beside a window, a bare light, centre-ceiling. The room, depressing enough, had no effect against the idea that he was alone, and how he’d never imagined this, could never have conceived that he would be separated from her in such a way.

After a shower he found a message from his wife in which she talked about HOSCO, only HOSCO, the information was accurate, certain of its facts. All of the men at Camp Liberty had received payment of some kind. A watch. Cash. A car. Rents paid. Loans paid. Advances made to mortgages. Medical payments erased. Debts settled. None of these payments were ever over five thousand, so they were easy enough to hide, and in each instance the payment or donation came directly from Howell himself or was traceable to him through his manipulation of the account system used by Southern-CIPA. ‘I don’t see anything in it but greed.’

Cathy, but not Cathy.

‘There is a kind of logic. If you think of him like a child in a candy store, the unpopular kid buying friendship, that kind of thing, but it’s clumsy, and he wasn’t very good at it. There’s evidence he was spending money then making it back by pilfering from other accounts. I’m guessing that storing the vehicles was a crude way of stocking up, putting together a marketable resource. One thing I don’t get is how the companies he was working for, HOSCO, Credita, SIMLAC, Venture, given the contracts these companies were managing, especially HOSCO, how none of them were on to him sooner? They all have separate account trails. I’ll have more of this together by Friday.’

When the message ended, he realized she’d called the wrong number, and when the phone began to ring again he leaned over the bed, watched Cathy — Cell light up the screen, the small phone vibrating the sheet.

She’d called the wrong number. She was sorry, but not sorry in a way, because she needed to speak with him. Actually, she didn’t need to speak with him, but she had something to tell him. She had some things to say. First, she hadn’t changed her mind. It wasn’t didn’t want so much as wouldn’t have. She wanted to explain the distinction because, yes, she still loved him, she thought she still loved him, in fact she knew this to be the case, but she couldn’t bear to go through this. After working so hard at the separation, she couldn’t see herself working equally hard or possibly harder at getting back what they had. And there was no guarantee that they would even get back there, not really. All that work and no guarantee. She didn’t have it in her, and doubted that she would find it. She wanted to explain, but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t clichéd, and wondered if that was how it worked? You get so tired that even the words, the phrases you need, are exhausted? She was worn out, and maybe if she was any other age and not thirty-seven she’d feel something else about the matter and find the energy to continue, or the fear not to be alone, but no, at thirty-seven she found she had nothing to invest and no real fear in starting over.

She wanted to say more, she said, but knew that this would be cruel.

She didn’t want to see him, not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas, that the effort required just to be in the same space with him right now was beyond her. She’d switched off. It was sad, but that’s exactly how she felt about it, and she didn’t imagine that this would change, although, who knows, she could be wrong.

As one final favour she gave him her final analysis on Camp Liberty: her idea on what had happened.

‘You let people take advantage of you. It isn’t that you’re stupid, it’s just that you don’t see it. They were all running circles round you right from the beginning. The simple fact is you just continued to make the same mistake for the same reasons. You took a job without properly knowing what it involved, you stumbled into it and couldn’t see your way out, so rather than drop what you’d gotten yourself into, you just continued.’ And this, she thought, was the reasoning of an animal, something caught in brambles that pushes deeper into a briar without calculating and reasoning the best way out. ‘It isn’t your fault that you were used. Someone saw you coming, they recognized the kind of person you are, the opportunity was waiting for someone just like you to come along, and once you did, well … Did you ever seriously think any of this through? Did you ever sit down and ask yourself what you were doing? Did you ever think through the possibilities of what might happen? The consequence of this is real. One man is dead, another missing. Two men are sick, perhaps all of you, because you can’t work yourself out of trouble.

‘I know this isn’t fair. I know this is holding you responsible for other people’s actions. But you were part of it, and you’ll have to come to terms with that. One way or another. You are, at root, entirely responsible.’

* * *

Rem lay in bed, sleepless. Sounds from the highway pressed upon him, busy, irregular traffic with no real lull or rhythm — the room disturbed with other people’s noise, sliding doors, walls that unaccountably cracked, the air-conditioner’s poorly tuned complaints. Just noise, and too much of it.

She didn’t want him.

This idea made no sense. There wasn’t anyone else. Baggage. This is what it all came down to. Trouble. You’re all inside out. You start where other men stop. Everyone else bears their trouble inside, but you, you dress yourself in it, it comes flying at you, attaches itself. You’re too expensive to be around, it just takes too much.

* * *

He parked opposite the store and asked himself if he couldn’t do this in some other way?

Phone, email, letter?

This didn’t need to happen face to face.

The car clicked with the heat. Midday and no other traffic, which couldn’t happen on any other main street.

He couldn’t see into the store with the sun hard overhead, a sign saying ‘Kiprowski’ in small gold script.

Kiprowski’s mother — he knew the woman from first sight — with a crate of mangoes, leaned forward as she elbowed sideways out of the door.

With the mangoes set on a stand the woman still leaned forward, straightened when she saw him, noted his hesitation and told him he’d have to hurry if he’d come about the job as she was expecting someone.

In the window: a hammer, replacement blades for a bandsaw, a single dead wasp.

* * *

Back in the car one block on, he could remember the wasp and how it curved into itself, but couldn’t form the woman’s face, except the hair, that brown bob. Young hair, old face.

He hadn’t told her that her son was not liked. That he wasn’t popular. He hadn’t explained how distraught her son had become on the death of the translator, a man from the Yemen who was married, had children, and who’d died in an accident, a death only slightly more pointless and senseless than the death of her son.