Christopher Sorrentino - The Fugitives

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said. “You can’t imagine the stuff the guests here track in.”

“Who you talking to, Patty?” said a man’s voice. “Mr. A’s not in there.” Hanshaw drew his breath in slowly and held it.

“Myself, of course,” said Patty. “Who else do I have to talk to all day?” She winked at Hanshaw.

“Watch out,” the man’s voice said. “People’ll think you’re nuts.”

“I am nuts. This job makes you nuts.”

The voice laughed. “Well, I need to get in there, but I’ll stay out of your way. About how long’ll you be?”

“Me? Super quick. Ten minutes, tops.”

“OK.” The voice was already moving away. Hanshaw let out his breath.

“Guy’s such a pain in the rear end,” Patty said, coming in and letting the door close. “He wants me to tell him who’s in here. Like he’s not the one whose job it is to know.” She shook her head. Hanshaw laced his shoes quickly. He nodded and moved past her and to the door.

“It feels nice in here,” she said as he left. “Warm, like it’s supposed to.”

“WE BEES DOINGthis shit up right, yo,” said Jeramy, looking over Hanshaw’s shoulder. They were in the front room of Jeramy’s house. The hallway receded behind them, doors on either side.

“Oh, you think so?” Hanshaw gave him a silencing look and then jotted down the make, model, and plate number of Argenziano’s car and logged off the CJIC system. He handed Jeramy the information and a portable GPS tracker in a magnetic case. “It’s in the underground garage,” he said.

“How’m I’ma get there?”

“Howmima?” said Hanshaw. “Does she make pancakes? Wear a bandanna?”

Jeramy looked at him blankly.

“Take the truck,” said Hanshaw. He handed him the keys. “Remember, in and out. No fucking around. And put it under the rear end, ennit? If you put it under the front all he has to do is take a curb cut too fast, that’s the end of the story.”

Hanshaw stood up, as if he were the host and Jeramy were a visitor he was shooing away. Jeramy shrugged into his coat and ambled toward the door using his peculiar hobbling walk.

“Drive carefully,” said Hanshaw, and walked outside with him, standing on the porch in his shirtsleeves. He watched Jeramy drive off and hoped for the best. He thought that the surveillance was probably unnecessary, but he also knew enough about Argenziano to know that he was a man of fixed and limited habits. He didn’t like to take long lonely walks in the woods or jog the length of isolated beaches. Opportunities might be few. In and out. Hanshaw nodded to himself. He went back into the house and picked up the stolen laptop, opening it as wide as it would go. He leaned it against the leg of the coffee table, and then broke it into two pieces with one quick stomp. Mazel tov! he thought. He took the pieces and found a plastic shopping bag for them, then put on his coat and turned out the light in the front room. Carrying the broken computer in its plastic bag, he went down the porch steps and walked two, three houses up the road. He lifted the lid on the garbage can there, tossed in the computer, and then headed back to his place.

TODAY

Kat settled in the armchair where Mulligan liked to do his reading and he felt a vague discomfiture — his father rising up in him, he figured. Slave to habit and obscure household rituals. He fought it off. She closed her eyes and rather unceremoniously fell asleep. Pure of heart, he thought. In her fashion. He felt better, now that he was at home. It was just a little before two o’clock, but he went into the kitchen and made himself a drink, then returned and stood watching her for a few minutes. In the light of the lamp beside the armchair, her face looked like something that ought to be carved on the lid of a sarcophagus. He finished the drink, found her purse, quickly went through it. Someone named Nables had called three times and left a text message saying it was urgent that Kat should call back. He chucked the phone back into her bag, then made another drink and sat on the couch. He wondered how much more interesting things could get.

“You’re incorrigible,” he said aloud to himself. The booze had hit him just enough that he felt the desire for a cigarette, and he got one from the pack on the table and, after thinking about it for a moment, went outside to smoke it. He descended the porch steps and stood on the lawn, one hand in his pants pocket, looking up and down the block. When he went inside, Kat was awake again, still in the chair and looking around her as if she’d woken up after falling asleep someplace else.

“There you are.”

She looked at him blankly.

“Can I get you something?”

“Did my phone ring?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She said she’d call.”

Kat got up and took her phone from her purse. She called Becky’s number and left a message on her machine. She strolled over to Mulligan’s bookcase and began sliding books off the shelves at random and examining them. Was this obscurity or her own ignorance she was encountering? Nice-looking new book after nice-looking new book, and she’d never heard of any of them.

“I have an idea,” Mulligan said. Kat stood facing away from him, studying the dust jacket of a five-hundred-page novel. On it, a girl stood, legs astride, holding a gun at her hip.

“Is this any good?”

“I couldn’t get into it.”

“But you brought it to Michigan anyway.” She replaced it. She remained facing away.

“I have an idea,” he said again. She turned to look at him and he put what he thought was an enthusiastic expression on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s relax and not worry about it for five minutes.”

“How about this one?” Without looking, she reached for another book.

“Overwritten. It was up for an award I was judging.”

“Yet here it is.”

“They’re all terrible,” he said. “How about it?”

“I am relaxing.” Deliberately, she dropped the award nominee on the floor.

“Go for it. I don’t know what possessed me. We can take them all to the Salvation Army tomorrow.”

“I don’t care whether you keep them or not.”

“Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe it is absurd to have them, most of them. I’ll never read them. What am I trying to prove?”

“Will you stop questioning your place at the center of the universe for five minutes? I don’t care means I don’t care.”

“You’re still mad.”

“She should have called.”

“And she’s not picking up.”

“No.”

“If it’ll reassure you I’ll start listing the fifty possible ordinary reasons why she isn’t.”

Kat didn’t respond.

“I like the look of a lot of books, shelved books,” he said. “Maybe there’s something a little affected about it. I don’t know.”

Kat slipped her hand into the empty space where the fallen book had been. She pulled books down, widening the space. They tumbled to the floor, eight or ten books, paperbacks and hardcovers. “There,” she said.

“I actually have read some of those,” Mulligan said.

Kat daintily stepped out of the pile of books on the floor and sat down on the couch. “I need to go down there,” she said.

“She’s probably busy with the TV guy. Maybe the phone service was temporarily cut off as part of the installation. Maybe she needed to go out and adjust the dish. Maybe she had to run to the mall to buy a new TV stand.”

“She was supposed to call.”

“Call her again.”

“She’s not picking up.”

“Call the cops. Tell them your ailing mother isn’t answering.”