Hidden prey

Chapter 24

Grandpa fussed around the rest of the day-shuffled out to put a bill in the mailbox, raised the red flag for the mailman, saw that the van was still there. Went out to the garage, threw a shovel in the back of the car, unscrewed the automatic light in the garage-door opener, shuffled back to the house, and didn't look at the van, still there halfway up the block. Would it ever leave? And if it did, would it be replaced by another? He saw nothing at all on the backside of the block…

He couldn't help watching, but he was afraid he'd be spotted if he did. Eventually, he spent a few minutes vacuuming, pushing back and forth in front of the picture window. When he was done, he propped open one of Melodie's old compact cases in the corner of the window, among a group of plants, adjusted the mirror so he could see the van, then sat on a couch opposite the television and watched the mirror.

An hour or so after the cops left, Jan Walther called, panicked about being interviewed by the police. "They think Roger is a spy. They think he was spying with the Spivaks and the Svobodas and some people named Witold. They're crazy," she said.

"They are crazy," Grandpa agreed. "There's nothing we can do but cooperate. Maybe we should get a lawyer."

"Not yet; I can't afford a lawyer."

She gave him everything the cops had asked her about, but in the context of a protest to a relative. Excellent. Janet had been told a little bit, back when she was still in love with Roger, had been told that the spying was a heritage thing that the families were trying to work out of… but that was it. If the phones were bugged, her protests would sound normal and innocent. If the tapes ever got into court, they might help influence a jury.

He watched the van the rest of the afternoon; watched as a mostly cloudy day turned gloomy and dark, and little spits of rain began trickling down the window. At a little after five o'clock, the van pulled away. The movement was so quick, and unexpected, that Grandpa almost missed it-and he knew for certain, from watching all afternoon, that nobody had gotten into it. Whoever was driving had been inside all morning and afternoon.

This was not paranoia; he was being watched.

At seven o'clock, with a steady drizzle darkening the streets, he drove slowly down to the supermarket, and then back to the house, going out one way, coming back on the other side of the block. He saw no one following, and he knew all the cars still on the street. So the watch was sporadic-the state cop and the Russian must have wanted to see if he'd panic after they talked to him. Grandpa smiled as he pulled back into the garage, just thinking about it. He'd sold them, all right.

There was, he thought as he went into the house, just the slightest possibility that they were watching from a neighbor's house… but then, why would they watch from the van at all? Still…

Inside, thinking of bugs and phone taps, he said to Grandma, "Let's eat." He banged around the kitchen, heating up some spaghetti, fed her and then himself. When she was done, he cleaned her up for the fourth time that day, and parked her in front of the TV again. The History Channel had a show about World War II, the landings at Normandy. They watched it together, and he talked to his wife, and then they watched a show about ice dancing, then the local news, and finally he said, "Let's get you off to bed, sweetheart. Let's get you off to bed, okay?"

At ten thirty, he flushed the toilet and said into the walkie-talkie as the water rushed around the bowl, "Exactly at eight."

Three words. He got back two burps of static. Good. He got the silenced pistol and put it in the pocket of a black jacket, and pulled on the jacket.

At ten fifty-five, he slipped out the back door, stood in the shadows under the eaves. The rain wasn't as heavy as it had been, but the night was misty, with fog coming up from the street. He walked straight back to the garage, through the back door, pushed the button on the garage-door opener. If they were watching from the back of the house, then he was done. If they were on the other side of the street, he'd be okay. He didn't think they were there at all, but…

There was a figure coming up the alley, tall and thin, in a rain jacket. Carl. He gestured at the car, and Carl edged between the car and the garage wall, careful in the dark, and got in the driver's seat. "Where to? What's going on?"

"We need to talk to your father," Grandpa said. "He's up in Virginia."

"Dad? Do I have to talk to that asshole? What are we talking to him for?"

"Because he knows. And he's a drunk. The police have ways to put pressure on people, and he has to be warned. I can't call him-they may already be watching him… They asked about him this morning."

"What if they're watching him now?"

"They might be. But I think this whole investigation is small. They had a van watching me for two days, different vans, and now there's nobody. The police who came today seemed confused about what was going on…" He told Carl about the interview with Nadya and Lucas.

"So they know everybody," Carl said, when Grandpa finished.

"They know everybody, but not everything," Grandpa said.

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm working on that," Grandpa said. "I'm working on a story. A story they can believe."

"Dad's part of it? He's a drunk, he might say anything."

"I think he'll be able to handle it. I've figured out a role for him," Grandpa said.

Carl watched their back trail. Every time a car turned a corner behind them, he reported it. They took back roads, miles through the dark, rarely had anything in the rearview mirror.

"What did you tell your mom?" Grandpa asked.

"I told her I was going to stay over with you, that Grandma had been trying to get up at night."

"Good. As long as she doesn't call."

"She was already going to bed when I left."

Grandpa turned in his seat, looked at the long dark road behind them and said, "Enough. Let's go."

"I don't know where he is. Dad."

"I do," Grandpa said. "I had Bob Spivak find him."

Roger Walther was living in a shack off Old 169 between Hibbing and Parkville; a shack in every sense of the word-old weathered-board siding showing streaks of moss and rot in their headlights, a tumbledown plank stoop, junk in the front and side yards-old washing machines, a junked car, a battered fourteen-foot Lund fishing boat with a thirty-year-old outboard on the back, sitting on a trailer with no wheels.

A small porch had holes where the screens should have been; there were lights in the windows behind the porch, and when Carl got out of the car, he could smell the smoke from a wood fire, the smoke being pushed down to the yard by the thin drizzle. Grandpa got out of the car and said, "Come on."

"You sure he lives here?"

"That's what Bob said."

"I don't want to talk to the sonofabitch," Carl said. "I would've kicked his ass the last time we met up, except Mom stopped me."

"I'm not asking you to come in, I'm telling you," Grandpa snarled in the dark. "This is not an option; this is an operation. We are going to try to figure out a way to put an end to this investigation."

"How're we gonna do that?" Carl asked. The windows in the front had curtains, and now a silhouetted figure parted the curtains and looked out. The silhouette looked to Carl like a woman's.

"Watch," Grandpa said.

They walked up to the porch and as they were about to knock on the front door, it opened. A woman was there in a terry-cloth dressing gown, yellow with age; she was forty, overweight, with dark, oily skin; she smelled of bourbon and cigarettes.

"Who're you?"

"I'm Roger's grandfather and this is his son. We need to talk to him for a moment," Grandpa said.

The woman looked them over, then turned and called, "They say it's your kid and your grandpa."

"I'm coming…"

She stepped back from the door, and they stepped inside. The place smelled like cheap burning wood and newspaper, and baked beans. Roger came out of the back. He was a tall man, wearing black jeans and a plain white T-shirt; his hair, once blond, was going gray. He was barefoot. "What do you two want?" he asked.

"We need to talk to you for a moment. It's important, but…" Grandpa looked at the woman, and then back at Roger. "It's private."

Roger looked at them for a long four seconds, then asked, "Something happen to Jan?"

"No. It's about the four families," Grandpa said. "We've got a big problem."

"Fuck that," Roger said. But he turned to the woman and said, "You go on back in the bedroom. I'll be back in five minutes. You shut that door tight."

She put her hands on her hips and sighed, as if he'd just unloaded the burden of the world on her, then sullenly went back to the bedroom and slammed the door.

When the door slammed, Roger looked at Grandpa and then at Carl, and said, "Carl knows?"

"Yes," Grandpa said. He had his hand in his pocket and when he took it out, he had the silenced pistol in it.

Carl said, "What?" when he saw the pistol coming up, and Grandpa shot Roger in the heart.

Roger, looking surprised, fell down with a thump. The wooden floor echoed like a drum.

Carl said, "You shot my dad." Like a slap in the face; it staggered him.

Grandpa said, "Don't think. Go do the woman." He handed the gun to Carl. "Don't think, don't touch her, don't touch anything. Just go do it."

"You shot my fuckin' dad," Carl said, and the gun barrel drifted up toward Grandpa's waist.

"Don't point the gun at me; just take care of the woman."

"You… Jesus Christ." Carl stared at the old man.

Grandpa's voice turned to gravel: "Take care of the woman."

For a moment, everything balanced on a knife. The gun was now aiming at Grandpa's heart, and Carl took up the slack in the trigger.

"Don't think…"

They posed for another three seconds, then Carl suddenly turned, walked to the bedroom door, pushed it open. Grandpa heard the woman say, "What?" and then three shots, a quick bap-bap, and then a finishing bap.

Carl wandered back into the living room, a dazed look on his face. Grandpa said, "Are you all right?"

"Maybe."

"Give me the gun."

Carl handed it over. "Are you going to kill me someday?"

Grandpa was neither startled nor disturbed by the question. "No." He put the gun in his pocket and took out two black oversized garbage bags. "Help me get Roger in these things. I don't want blood in the trunk of the car."

"What's going on?" Carl asked, a pleading note in his voice.

"The cops were breaking us down-they're going to break us down. Unless we give them the shooter. We're giving them Roger."

"Why would… this is crazy."

"No. I can't tell you all of it. I can tell you this: from now on, you have to be a kid. You told me about maybe asking this girl to the home-coming. Tomorrow you've got to do it. You have to borrow some money from me for a sport coat and slacks, and you have to go buy them."

"What…?" Crazier and crazier.

Grandpa touched Carl on the shoulder, looked straight into his eyes. "There's more on this to do… But listen to me now. You are the last one of us. You have to go underground, and for you, that means that you have to go back to being a kid. A child. You're an adult now, and it'll be hard, but it's critical, Carl. You have to remember what you are, but you have to play at being a high-school boy. Can you do that?"

Carl shrugged, and said, "I suppose," and a flock of tears trickled down his cheek. He didn't notice.

Grandpa pointed at Roger's body, and Carl, stunned, helped roll the body into the two bags. When they were done, there was a small blood puddle on the floor, and Grandpa cleaned it up with paper towels and water and found that he'd left a clean spot on a dirty floor.

They fixed that by dragging a welcome mat across it a few times, until it had blended. That done, Grandpa went in to look at the woman: she was dead, all right. Carl had walked the gun up her body, shooting her first in the stomach and then in the chest, with a final shot in her forehead.

Okay.

"Let's get him out to the car."

The worst of it, Carl thought, was that Roger was still warm. He could still feel his father's body, all the heat, all the still-living cells, that hadn't yet gotten the message from his father's brain, as he staggered out into the rain and put him in the back of the car. The warmth reminded him of the day he'd killed the little dog…

Inside, Grandpa picked up the first of the nine-millimeter shells, the one he'd used to kill Roger; the others he left. And before walking out of the house, he took a single orange hunter's glove from his jacket pocket, and threw it in a closet.

"That's like…" Carl started. He looked at Grandpa. "Oh, Jesus, you knew way back when I went after the Russian."

"I was ready if we needed it," Grandpa said. "Come on. We need to go through the house and find what Roger would have taken with him, running. One suitcase. One duffel bag."

They actually found a hockey duffel in a closet, and threw everything into it that Roger might have taken-his shaving gear and miscellaneous clean-up stuff, like tweezers, Band-Aids, fingernail clippers, a brush, and comb. They took the best clothes and shoes they could find; they took photographs, including a photo of Carl as a five-year-old, on a park swing being pushed by his mother, both of them laughing; they took cigarettes and a jar of quarters and some cheap jewelry and they dumped the woman's purse and took the money out, seven dollars.

They did it all hastily, throwing the stuff into the duffel; except for the photograph of Carl and his mother, which Carl put in his pocket.

When they were done, they turned off the lights and tramped back out through the rain and got in the car. "Drive that way," Grandpa said.

Carl followed the instructions, turning this way and that. At some point, he began to cry, clutching the steering wheel in both hands, trying to stay in the middle of a narrow gravel road track while looking through both tears and the rain.

"Turn left, right after this tree," Grandpa said.

"Where are we?"

"They were logging here last summer. Starts a hundred feet back or so."

They followed a rough dirt track through the trees, down a gentle slope, around a stump; a hundred feet in, as promised, the forest suddenly ended and the headlights punched into featureless darkness. All the trees were gone. In the near foreground, Carl could see dirt chewed up by bulldozers.

Grandpa got out of the car, walked around to the trunk. "You'll have to dig," he told Carl.

Carl dug, in the light of a flashlight; Grandpa was afraid to use the headlights. They found a low spot without any nearby tree wreckage, and cut down through the sandy ground, Grandpa urging him to work faster, Carl working as fast as he could, throwing dirt, fighting through the occasional root. When he was finished, he was covered with mud.

Together, they lifted the body from the back of the car and dropped it in the hole, and threw the duffel bag on top of it. They stood there for a minute, then Grandpa pulled the pistol out of his pocket and dropped it in the hole. Grandpa shifted the light away, and said, "Fill it."

Filling the hole took only five minutes. When it was done, they stomped around on top of it, and finally dragged a shredded aspen over the raw dirt. They'd been lucky with the rain, Grandpa said; the rain would take care of the rest of it. By morning, the grave site would be invisible.

The ride home was long, but not silent. Grandpa said, "This is the worst. This is the worst night of your life, so you never have to worry about that anymore. This is one of the worst of my life, after the death of my son. But I tell you: this is the critical step that we needed to protect the families. And your father… your father was a ruined man, no good for anybody. No good for your mother, no good for you. He was a ruin. His life was already over."

Carl started crying again, and said, "But he was my dad."

"I know, I know…"

And it went like that.

At Grandpa's, they both stripped down and threw their clothing into the washing machine, and Grandpa washed their shoes in the kitchen sink and patted them dry with kitchen towels and newspapers. "They'll be fine by morning," he said. They took their clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer, and then Carl made a bed on the couch and Grandpa gave him two of Grandma's sleeping pills.

"You need the sleep before school," Grandpa said. "These are strong and will take you down for five hours. Try to sleep."

Carl took the pills, and immediately on swallowing, was struck by the suspicion that he shouldn't have; was he part of Grandpa's plan? But the old man had turned away from him, said, "Try to sleep; try to empty your mind. Try not to cry, because if you do, your eyes will be red. And remember tomorrow, if I forget to tell you, you must ask the girl on the date to homecoming. That's important: you have to go back to being a kid."

"Okay, Grandpa. We had to do it, didn't we?"

"We had to," Grandpa said.

Grandpa hit the lights and said good night, and then Grandma's pills came on, pulling Carl straight down into a pit of darkness.

As for Grandpa, for Burt Walther, for Sergey Vasilevich Botenkov, he slept quite well.