A Knife Edge

TWENTY-THREE

Pensacola lay on the far side of the Pensacola Bay Bridge. A brisk early-morning wind was pulling at the gray water, dragging up little white triangles all over the bay and blowing them into spindrift.

According to the digital display on the dash, it was only 8:45. I was too late to catch Ms. McDonough at home. Elmer's Sports Store was a ten-minute drive away, so I headed there. It wasn't hard to find, a shop in a mall off Pensacola Boulevard that looked like it had seen better days. Or maybe these days were the best it was ever likely to see. Or maybe it was just being punished by progress — there was a newer, bigger version a couple of miles back up the road. The place looked blackened and eroded by road grit and exhaust fumes that had been blowing off the adjacent multilane since the day the mall's foundations were laid. Faded “SALE” signs hung askew in almost every window. Paper cups, burger wrappers, straws, and plastic bags from the fast-food joints that had refused to read the writing on the walls of this shopping Alamo had gathered in the corners of the buildings and perimeter cyclone fencing like discarded ammunition boxes on a battlefield where the fight had moved on. The parking lot, which was so vast as to seem more an exercise in wishful thinking, was dotted here and there with vehicles in not much better condition than the buildings, most of which were closed, shuttered, and barred. The aforementioned writing on the walls was everywhere — black, angry, aggressive, and mindless. I wondered how many tennis rackets Elmer's was selling these days.

I walked inside and found a joint selling coffee to early-bird shoppers and retail staff. I bought a cup — strong and black, no sugar — and a cheese-and-bacon sandwich. The food was surprisingly good. I ate the sandwich and ordered another. A few of the shops were getting ready to open. Most of the salespeople were no more than kids, and were either lardy or anorexic, depending on their chosen eating disorder.

I sat on a bench outside Elmer's, drank the coffee, ate the second sandwich, and waited for Amy McDonough to make an appearance. More shoppers were starting to arrive. They were a listless bunch. All the fight had gone out of them. Several stood outside the shops, waiting, staring, waiting.

I noticed movement inside Elmer's. I went to the window and had a look inside. A guy in a blue tracksuit-style uniform was at the counter, on the phone, one of his arms waving about like he was bronco busting. He was yelling. Good soundproofing stopped me from hearing what he was yelling about.

Five past nine. No sign of Ms. McDonough, but there was a chance she'd arrived early and I'd missed her. The shutter rolled up on Elmer's. I went inside and had a walk around, making like a shopper nosing for a bargain. Elmer's was basically a large rectangular room with an office at the back. I knew this because there was a door behind the free-weights section with the word “Office” on it. Posters showing various athletes achieving greatness and others depicting women who looked like they were in the middle of an orgasm while they worked out hung on the walls. The showroom smelled of new rubber, cardboard, and old dust. Elmer had a large selection of running shoes. He also specialized in jogging machines and home gym equipment like the machines Ruben had bought.

The guy in the blue tracksuit stayed behind the counter and leaned on it, studying an old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. He didn't look up. Maybe he didn't want to look up in case he found himself standing behind the counter in a run-down sports shop. He was in his early twenties, baby-faced and big. Not in an athletic way, but in an extra-cheese-and-giant-fries way. He had white, greasy skin, pimples, and a fine black mustache that looked like it might come off in the wash — if he ever had one. The way he flipped over the magazine's pages, every few seconds and violently, suggested there was nothing in the issue he hadn't seen a thousand times already, and that something had pissed him off. Maybe it was the phone call; maybe it was the fact that there was nothing in the magazine he hadn't seen a thousand times already. His name tag said I should call him Boris.

“Yeah,” he said when I approached, looking up from the mag with a look of flat boredom.

“I'd like to speak with Amy if she's in.”

“Related to something you want to buy or return?”

He said this like he was reading it off a card.

“No.”

“Then it's private business. Private business may not be conducted during business hours. Company policy.”

Spoken like a true dipshit. “Then she's here?”

“Perhaps you didn't hear me, sir.”

It was obvious Chuckles didn't know this great nation of ours was built on the idea of service with a smile. I headed for the office.

“Hey!” he called out to my back as I opened the door. Behind it was a small room with a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet, and an old Pamela Anderson calendar on the wall. It was March 2002—ancient history — and Pammy was playing with a python. There was no Amy McDonough.

“Turn around real slow, mister.”

I turned. Boris was armed with a baseball bat. A wooden one. It was old by the look of it — didn't want to abuse the stock, most likely. Elmer himself had probably put it behind the counter thirty years ago in case of folks coming in and asking questions about things other than sports. “Baseball season's over, sonny,” I said.

Boris had fifty pounds on me, maybe more. He was working through the odds. I could see it in his face, in the curl of his lips, the narrowed eyes, the flared nostrils, the pupils dilated by the adrenaline surging through his system. I could tell he'd come to the conclusion that the odds were in his favor. He swung the bat to get a feel for it.

“Y'all want to tell me who you are and what you want?”

“Not unless you say the magic word.”

This confused him. He had a weapon; I didn't. Why wasn't I scared, or at least conciliatory? The reasons had a lot to do with experience. In fact, I wish I had a dollar for every weapon I'd taken out of the hands of drunken airmen and soldiers. Mostly those weapons were either broken bottles or bar stools rather than baseball bats, but the principle was the same.

“Please,” I told him. “The magic word is please.”

He swung the bat again — a ranging swing — and took a step forward.

I didn't move. “Look, I just wanted to talk to Amy. She's not here? Fine. I'm happy to walk out.”

He seemed happier with this apparent appeasement. He misread it. “You came in all abusive. I have the right to protect myself and my customers.”

“More company policy?” I asked.

Boris answered by suddenly rushing in, swinging. I ducked under the bat and kept low. His momentum kept him going past me. We both turned and he came back for another go with a few more wild swings. He missed — I knew from his eyes and the shift in his body weight where the swings were coming from, like he was sending me e-mails on his next move. When he'd finished this flurry, I put a leg-extension machine between us. Boris's face was red with splotches of white. He was breathing heavily with effort.

I was getting tired of the game as well as concerned that he might just get lucky anyway and connect with my head. I said, “If you swing that thing at me one more time, I'll take it off you and teach you some manners.”

Boris smiled. He was enjoying himself; perhaps for the first time in a long time he was getting a little serious job satisfaction. Perhaps he was also thinking about how his boss would call him a hero for subduing this here abusive noncustomer as per company policy. He raised the bat high over his head and rushed forward. Instead of retreating and giving him room for the downward swing, like he expected, I stepped toward him. The bat was still behind his head, pointing down toward his ankles, when I grabbed it and pulled it all the way down behind his back. I wrenched it from his hands as his knees buckled and he fell backward. He lay on the floor, hands in front of his face, waiting for me to teach him those manners.

“Get up,” I demanded.

He rolled onto his side, got to his knees, and then staggered to his feet. The sneer on his face was gone, replaced by a quivering chin.

I propped the bat against a triceps machine. “Boris, it's no wonder the folks around here are choosing to shop somewhere else. Now, ask me again and this time use the magic word.”

“I–I forgot the question,” he said.

“You asked me who I was and what did I want.”

“ Who-who are you and what do you want?”

“Please.”

“P-please.”

“Now, was that so hard?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I pulled my badge and held the shield where he could see it. “Vin Cooper, special agent with the United States Air Force, and I already told you what I wanted.”

“McDonough called in sick. I'm only supposed to be on a half day and she called in sick.”

I actually felt sorry for the slob. He'd be replaying this little scene with me in his mind for the rest of his life, replaying it and no doubt playing it forward differently.

“Is that a reason to try improving your batting average on potential customers?” I asked.

“No, sir.”

“Special Agent.”

“What?”

“You don't have to call me sir. Is that who you were on the phone with?”

“Yeah. McDonough said she had to go to the doctor's.”

“I don't suppose you know who that doctor is?”

“Nah. She said she might not be back till tomorrow. But, like, fuck, you know… I've got things I need to do, too,” he said. The quivering chin had mutated into anger. His humiliation was Amy McDonough's fault, my fault, Elmer's fault, anyone's fault but his own.

“This is my card.” I took one from my wallet and held it out to him. He reached for it with a long arm like it was going to bite him. Or maybe blow up. “She calls you back, you don't tell her I came to see her.”

“No, sir.”

“You find out where she is and you call me. Please.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where's Mr. Elmer?”

“Died ten years ago.”

“Who's the boss now?”

“His nephew — never comes in.”

There were still no customers in the store. The place was atrophying, heading for life support. Or maybe the nephew wanted it DNR, for tax reasons. “Don't you go losing that card, Boris.”

“No, sir.”

“Special Agent.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

I walked out into the parking lot. My cell rang. The screen told me it was a private number, which I usually don't answer. In a rare moment of cell generosity, I pressed the green button. “Special Agent Cooper,” I said as I watched three guys take their anger and frustration out on a wall with cans of orange spray paint.

“Hello. My name's Erwin Griffiths. You left a message to call.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said. “What did you say your name was?”

“Erwin Griffiths.”

“Where you from, Mr. Griffiths? I've left a few messages around town lately.”

“Sure. Ah, I'm from a company called Neural Paths.”

Neural Paths — I remembered. “Yeah, Erwin,” I said. “I'm investigating the death of a man you called at the beginning of last week — before Christmas.” I leaned against the Explorer and watched one of the graffiti artists throw a rock at the one last unshattered pane of glass. He missed.

“Oh, sorry to hear that. Dead? Can you tell me who it was that died? Don't mean to be rude here, but, like you, I call a lot of people.”

“Ruben Wright.”

“Ruben Wright, Ruben Wright, Ruben… Oh, yeah, got his file right here. Dead? Hmm… that's a shame.”

He made it sound like it was a shame Ruben's file was on his desk rather than on someone else's.

“Can you tell me what kind of company Neural Paths is, Erwin?” I asked.

“Sure. We do, like, credit card fraud.”

“Credit card fraud. You mind giving me an overview?”

“OK… Well, let me tell you something about yourself you probably aren't aware of. You're predictable. Most people don't like being told this, but it's true.”

He continued. “You… everyone, in fact, spends money in a manner that software can now predict. That's because you spend money in a pattern that's highly regular. As I said — you're predictable. If you deviate from that spending pattern, either in the type of things you buy or the amount you spend — sometimes both — the program pops your name up on screen and someone like me gives you a call to check that your erratic spending isn't the result of card fraud — that your card isn't being used by a person, or persons, unknown to you.” I heard him take a breath.

I didn't know Erwin, but I sensed he was the kind who found the word “brief” beside the word “impossible.”

“You called Ruben Wright because of his spending patterns?”

“Yep, textbook. He'd suddenly gone from being a pain-in-the-ass customer who never used his plastic to the kind of customer the credit card company wanted on its gold rewards program. Like, if it was really Mr. Wright spending all that money, which I was calling to confirm, then the credit card company would have asked him if he wanted to increase his limit.”

The Ruben I remembered kept a family of moths in his billfold. Spending bags of money? Not the Ruben I knew — and obviously not the one the credit card company was familiar with either.

“So Wright's dead?” Erwin asked, the voyeur in him coming out for a look around, hoping to catch a glimpse of something truly nasty — the way drivers slow down for a traffic accident, eager for a glimpse of blood.

I cut off his enthusiasm. “Yeah. So I doubt he'll want to take up that rewards program.”

“Oh. Well, then … thank you,” he said, miffed, sounding like I'd short changed him.

“Glad to be of service,” I said, hanging up. I was intrigued. There was something going on here — an erratic pattern that the software between my ears had picked up.