The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I stare at the phone, looking to take back the words I just said to Cyris, wanting to reach through the dead air and pull them back, but they’re no longer mine, they’re his, and he’s going to do with them what he wants to. That’s the thing about Cyris. He’s all about setting the rules.

The car windows are slightly fogged over from my heavy breathing. It feels like fifty degrees in here and the air tastes stale. I wipe a hand over the glass, smudging a path through the moisture and creating a gateway to the outside. Kathy and Luciana are standing only a few yards from my door. I stare at them, waiting for Jo to appear, but she doesn’t, and perhaps she won’t until I know for a fact that my words have killed her.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hold them closed for a few seconds to give the two girls a chance to disappear, and when I open them back up and see them still there I start to doubt that they’re only in my mind. They look happier since I saw them last, as if somehow at peace. My skin tingles as my arms break out in goose bumps. A cold chill blasts its way down the back of my neck as if the air-conditioning in the Holden has just been cranked to some mystery arctic setting. I try to open the door, but my arms won’t move. I can barely breathe. The world sways and I can hardly stay conscious.

Kathy is wearing a long, white dress, shoulderless, the material thin and whispery. Luciana is wearing a summer dress covered in small, red roses and yellow daffodils. She’s wearing a hat too. She looks tanned. None of these clothes I saw them wearing, so why would I see them dressed like this now? They’re holding hands as they stand there smiling at me. I get my arms moving jerkily and manage to roll down the window. Their mouths open and close, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Kathy takes a step forward. Her hair is blowing in some invisible breeze. Luciana follows. My eyes are starting to sting, but I’m too frightened to blink, too frightened that in that split second they will disappear. Something is going on here that can’t be controlled by either my imagination or my conscience.

That’s when Jo appears. She fades into view, like somebody sneaking out of the shadows. She’s wearing the same dress she wore on our first date. She offers a sad smile, the kind of sympathetic smile you have when you’ve just found out one of your friends has been hurt by bad news.

“Jo,” I say, and seeing her is confirmation that I fucked up, that my words have killed her.

“It’s okay, Charlie,” she says.

I tell her I’m sorry. I try the door handle and just then the phone rings. I glance at it. In that instant Kathy is gone, Luciana has gone with her, they’ve taken Jo, and I’m alone in my car looking back at an empty street. My window is still rolled up, the smear mark on the glass from my hand is still clear. My face is covered in a film of sweat and the lump on my forehead is throbbing. As I scramble for the phone it slips in my fingers and bounces off the passenger seat onto the floor. I reach down, grab it, and open it while I’m still hunched over the gearshift.

“Cyris?”

“Charlie, it’s me.”

“Jo!” I say, and hearing her voice serves not only to make me feel relieved she is still alive, but also proves the ghosts are not ghosts at all.

“I’m okay, Charlie.”

Thank God. Thank you, God. “Has he hurt you?”

“I’m okay. He wants me to tell you he’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“I know.”

“He says don’t try anything, Charlie.”

“I won’t.”

“He’ll let us go.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

She hesitates, and then, “I have to go. Be careful, Charlie. Promise me that.”

“Jo,” I say, but I’m already talking into a broken connection.

Jo is alive and so is my hope. I will either die in hope or live in despair. I drop the phone onto the seat and get back to the very business I came here to do, which is waiting. Waiting to see what Kathy’s husband does.

Cyris told me he was busy tonight. I know from experience he’s been busy the last few nights so I’m thinking if there’s a payoff to take place there’s a chance it’s tonight.

I stare out the window as the minutes pass. The night gets darker. The number of people walking by thins out and then there are none. Lights are turned on as people settle in for the evening. An hour passes. Two hours. I’m starting to need a bathroom. Lights start to turn off. People are going to bed. I have nothing to do but run my theory over and over in my head. The problem is it looks bad. Looks worse every time I glance at my watch and see another block of time has gone by. I was wrong to think the payment would be tonight and the passing minutes prove this to me. Wrong to think the husband is involved.

Wrong about everything.

I reach toward the ignition. I’m going to have to pay Cyris and hope for the best. Resort to Plan B, which I’m still working on. I hear a car start before I start my own. I let go of the keys and lean forward. Could this be it? I wait and watch as the Mercedes reverses down the driveway and onto the street. Frank. Frank the cheating husband. The car straightens and heads away from me.

I start the Holden and begin following. I don’t turn my headlights on. When he turns the corner I keep fifty yards behind him. The full moon and streetlights provide more than enough light to drive by, turning the roads pale blue except for the road markings, which glow white. Stars twinkle in the sky, their light coming from millions of miles away and centuries ago. I wonder if people like Cyris lived on those long-lost worlds. A few people coming toward me flash their lights, but Frank the cheating husband can’t see that, not from fifty yards ahead. Before I take the next corner, I turn on my lights.

The theory I’ve been playing with is once again starting to look good. I wonder how much money exchanged hands to end two women’s lives. In a fair world I should be getting a cut of those funds. Was money the motive? I’ve seen Frank’s house. I’ve seen his car. He was cheating on his wife. He wanted a divorce and didn’t want to give her half of everything. Instead he took everything she ever had.

Of course this is all guesswork. He could just be heading out for a hamburger.

We turn right at a set of lights and my fear that he’s meeting Cyris outside the city is quashed when Frank’s brake lights come on and he signals before pulling into a dead-end side street next to a shopping mall. I continue ahead and park on the road opposite. I kill the engine and pull up the hand brake. I pull the lens caps off the binoculars and watch him eight times bigger than normal life as he pulls into the entrance to the parking lot to his left. He pulls into it and kills his lights, but keeps on driving, making it difficult to follow him through my narrow field of vision. He turns right, goes straight for a bit, then turns left and out of sight. I pull the binoculars away and tuck them back into my pocket. I know this mall: he can’t have gone far.

The dashboard clock reads eleven fifty. If Frank is making a payoff it makes sense it’s going to happen at midnight. That gives me ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes to consider where things can go wrong. Ten minutes to figure what I can do about it.

I suck in a deep breath and, checking there’s no other traffic, I leave my car and run across the road. Spur-of-the-moment decisions haven’t been working out for me well this week, but I figure one has to go right. It’s like continually doubling down on red at the roulette table, chasing your losses and knowing it can’t keep on coming up black. Statistically it’s impossible that you can roll the wheel for the next fifty years and never get it to go your way.

Only at the end of the day the house always wins.

I vault the low railing that separates the parking lot from the sidewalk and land without the embarrassment of tripping. I break into a jog. Like town this afternoon, there are diggers and cranes and other building equipment lying around. Skeletons of more parking lots and more shops to come look like macabre playground equipment. Mounds of shingle and dirt form small hills. It takes me half a minute to reach the turn where the car disappeared. I crouch down and peer around the corner. I can see Frank’s car but no Frank. The car has its headlights facing me, but they’re not on. I keep watching and a few moments later Frank appears from behind his car. He climbs into his seat, pulls the door shut and, keeping the lights off, begins rolling forward. With nowhere to run I lie flat against the ground and watch the car arc around at least fifteen yards away from me so I’m out of sight. My army fatigues do what they’re designed for, and he doesn’t see me. He passes and accelerates away. The headlights flick on. He leaves the parking lot and pulls out onto the street.

I count to ten, eager to rush out there but not stupid enough. Then I count to ten again just to be sure. I make my way to where the car was parked. I turn in a slow circle. Ahead the neon letters of the supermarket have been switched off to save power. To my left the wall of the mall has been freshly painted, covering up a recent attack by graffiti artists-if you can call somebody who scrawls capital letters across a wall with spray paint an artist. To my right at the end of the parking lot is a neighboring fence. The supermarket runs almost the entire distance from the mall wall to that fence, except for a service alley at the far end. None of this inlet can be seen from the road. I walk up to the large glass doors of the supermarket. Hundreds of shopping carts are parked inside, boxes and bags, the sort of stuff you should see when you look through supermarket windows. Frank got out of his car, moved behind it, and came over here. Somewhere.

It only takes me a minute to find the briefcase. It’s sitting in a garbage bin that’s bolted to the ground a few yards to the left of the supermarket doors. I don’t bother opening it, but carry it back to my car, running the entire way. I get into the driver’s seat and pop the lid open and stare at bundles of cash. Lots of fresh brand-new bills. A lot of money looks great. It makes you feel rich, like you’ve achieved something. Even if you haven’t. So that’s how I’m feeling. I’m feeling rich for achieving little. I’m feeling rich for achieving a lot of fuckups over the last few days. I’m also feeling smarter than Cyris and maybe that’s dangerous. Maybe for once the house isn’t going to win.

But I’m also feeling angry, more at Frank than at Cyris right now. Frank is the reason the two girls died, and therefore the reason that Jo has been kidnapped. He’s also the reason Landry got himself shot up and thrown into a river. It all stems from him squirreling away this pile of cash and saving it up so his wife could be sliced up and killed. I feel like driving after Frank and running him off the road. Feel like punching and kicking and even stabbing him, over and over and over till he’s dead, at the same time asking him how it feels. What a bastard. What a piece of trash. I can feel myself burning up. I wonder if this is the full amount, or if it was one of those half now half and half after kind of jobs. I wonder why Frank didn’t pay Cyris earlier, then realize he probably couldn’t-he needed a day or two for things to die down. Making a payment the same day his wife was murdered wouldn’t look too good.

Action Man is angry. And, like I thought earlier, Action Man is no longer a victim.

I spill the cash onto the floor well in front of the passenger seat, creating a pile of cash in different denominations. I pop the glove box and grab hold of the pen the car rental agency guy gave me. Withdrawing a single hundred-dollar note from the pile of cash, I write on it, having to go over the same lines a few times to make the letters dark enough. Then I place it inside the briefcase. I close the lid and click both latches closed. It’s much lighter now.

Still no traffic so I run across the road and this time, instead of vaulting the barrier, I hurdle it. I land running, pumping my legs hard, holding the briefcase in front of me. I round the corner. Same supermarket, same view of shopping carts behind windows, same garbage bin. I put the briefcase where I found it. Before I can head back, tires shriek into the parking lot and headlights wash across the neighboring fence, sweeping toward me. My only chance is the service alley. I dive just as the light behind me comes into view. I hit the ground hard and come to a stop against a chain-link gate that rattles but not loudly enough for Cyris to have heard over the car. My car. I twist around and, staying low, peer around the corner.

Instead of turning the car around as Frank had, Cyris keeps my Honda pointing directly at the garbage bin. He climbs out of the car and doesn’t look in my direction. He looks exactly the same as last night from the scruffy facial hair to the black clothes. The only difference is a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. It really pisses me off seeing him driving my car in such a way that when this is all over and I’ve killed the son of a bitch, I’m going to be buying a new car. He walks to the bin, walking with a slight limp and with one hand against this stomach. He reaches it and grabs the briefcase. He rests it over the edges of the bin, tilts it toward him, and pops it open with his thumbs. The angle is wrong for me to study his expression, but not wrong enough to watch him stand there for a full minute, still and silent. He closes the case, turns it around in his hands, sets it back down, and opens it again, as if he’s the victim of a parlor trick. Then he turns from the garbage bin and carries the hundred-dollar note to the front of the car. Carefully he examines it under the headlights, turning it over so he can read the note I wrote for him. In the end he screws the bill into his jeans and walks back to the briefcase. He picks it up and swings it hard into the bin. The impact clangs out into the night. After two more blows the briefcase starts cracking and the bin begins to fold inward. The headlights isolate him from the darkness as though he’s on a stage.

He stops thrashing the briefcase, swings his arm back, and throws it high in the air. It hits the roof of the supermarket and doesn’t come back down. He leans over the bin and starts shaking it, pulling it from side to side, wrenching it back and forth until it tears from the bolts, leaving jagged holes in the bottom. He holds it high above his head for a few seconds, then throws it at the supermarket doors. It bounces off with a metallic thud, the dents in it stopping it from rolling away once it hits the ground. He picks it back up and throws it harder. This time the glass cracks. The third throw gets it through the glass doors. The alarms are instant.

He walks back to my car, clutching his stomach, and when he pulls his hand away I can see it’s red. He’s bleeding. He leans against the car and watches the supermarket.

I turn around and study the service-alley gate. Ten feet tall and made up of chain-link wire. I’m sure I can scale it without being heard over the alarm. I do just that, climbing it like a large spider. I follow the alley until it circles toward the back entrances of the shops in the mall. I scale another fence and hit the ground in some industrial section, perhaps an auto body shop-it’s too dark to tell exactly. Then over another fence and into somebody’s backyard. I climb into a park, and start to circle my way back toward my car. By the time I get there two police cars are in the parking lot, but probably no Cyris. With thousands of dollars in the car I’m lucky not to be walking home right now. I guess it’s a school night for all those joyriders out there. I do a U-turn, pissed off that I let Cyris get ahead of me, but what could I do? Wait for him to stop breaking glass doors then run after his car?

I keep my foot on the accelerator, hovering between thirty and forty miles per hour. I can’t afford to be too late. Cyris already has ten minutes on me and I doubt he took his time driving to Frank’s. I also doubt there’s anywhere else in the world he’d be going right now.

I wonder if I’m already too late.