After Death, page 22
Feigning death, Orlando relishes the prospect of telling Alana about this when next he sees her. After years of listening to the tales she has read aloud, he has learned to craft the events of his day into little stories that frequently wring from his lady a gasp of surprise or a shudder of horror or a laugh of sheer delight. In this, he feels that he is giving back, returning to her some of the pleasure that she has shown him can be found in storytelling. She has taught him more than he would have imagined when they had their first date after meeting through Enchantment Now, and the most important lesson he has learned is that a successful relationship is all about giving. Who would’ve thought? Orlando has been especially amazed that this truth applies to sex no less than to other aspects of a relationship. Before Alana, he had given no thought to what a girl felt when he was doing it to her. He finds it funny to realize now that he had assumed girls took no pleasure in it, that they only claimed to be thrilled so they could get their money or, on those occasions when they weren’t whores, to avoid maybe being hit for not stoking a man’s pride with faked orgasmic cries. Some days he thinks he loves Alana, and some days he knows he loves her, but he no longer has a day when he doubts that he loves her.
Orlando finds himself wondering about this guy who came out of nowhere, this mysterious rifleman, wondering what his motive might be. He’s for sure not some lawman, because they never come alone and because they don’t shoot seven dudes in one episode without flashing a badge and telling everyone to put down their weapons. Besides, in recent years, there has been mutual respect and shared interests between the gangs and many district attorneys, between the gangs and the most clear-thinking politicians, even between the gangs and some sheriffs and police chiefs who have realized the futility of putting their lives on the line when the previously judgmental establishment has evolved to include both lawmakers and lawbreakers who recognize the wisdom of cooperation.
In a moment of sudden enlightenment, Orlando conjectures that no man alone sets himself against eight armed gangbangers for mere money, or for vengeance, or for sport, and certainly not as a matter of principle, but only for one thing—love. Before Alana, he would not have achieved this moment of illumination. Nina has a guy whom Aleem never knew about, a guy who will do anything for her, even hang himself out there in order to blow away the leader of a gang and the leader’s main men. It’s Romeo and Juliet all over again, Harry meets Sally, Bonnie and Clyde; it’s the thing that makes the world go round, even if some guys, like Orlando, take half their life to realize what that is. Masud and Speedo are certainly dead, which is the way it has to be when Romeo has an AR-15 and burning love in his heart. Seven have died trying to thwart the love of a man for a woman. It’s an epic right up there with the best novels that have a romance in them, and he can’t wait to shape it into a story that will leave Alana wide-eyed.
This is a night for serial enlightenments, for now he realizes that if he shoots these three in the back and subsequently gives each the coup de grâce of a second bullet in the head, he won’t be able to tell Alana about the rifleman’s love for Nina, not any of it. The anecdotes with which he charms her concern the strange and sometimes amusing twists and turns of his daily enforcements. They occasionally involve a killing, but he has never wasted anyone who was a great romantic figure. Considering the disrespect and trouble that some ninth-grade boys have given Alana, she might warm to an account of his killing John, but she will freeze at the realization that he also popped the devoted and adoring rifleman and his true love, Nina. If Orlando avenges his homeys yet wants to share Alana’s life as she ascends through the education establishment to positions in which she controls the dispensation of many millions of dollars, he dare not share with her the events of this night. She will inevitably wonder if he truly believes in her love for him and his for her, if whether the time might come, some currently unimaginable circumstance, when a sense of duty to his homeboys will require him to kill his own true love. Such a tragedy will never occur. As she has changed him, Orlando is now—as he’ll always be—incapable of committing such a horror, but she will not be able to put out of mind the Orlando as he was before he knew her. Suspicion. Suspicion poisons relationships.
The thing is, he can’t bear not sharing with Alana the stirring tale of the romantic rifleman who, in the grip of passion, killed so many that his true love might live. It will be the best story that he’s ever told her, and she has a love of stories, being an English teacher and all. Abruptly, yet another revelation thrills him—that if he does not kill these three for whom he is lying in wait, the story he’ll then tell Alana will be even better, even more stirring, and she will see that Orlando and the rifleman are of like kind, two shining knights for whom love for a woman trumps all else, even duty to their homeys.
Oh, but how completely this violates the code, the utilitarian ethics that have shaped his life in the gang. He can continue being an enforcer, and he will no doubt still enjoy the work, but if he doesn’t kill these three, he will know that he hasn’t always been faithful to the gangbanger creed. As he waits for them to pass by, as he hears them approaching, he lies in a misery of conflicting emotions, in a torment of conscience, not least of all in fear of being unable to explain to the new masters of the gang why he alone survived events in the orchard. He presses the gun flat against his heart. His hand grips the gun. His finger slides from trigger guard to trigger. He eases the weapon out of his raincoat. To kill or not to kill. Man, boy, woman—they pass him unawares, presenting their backs as easy targets to this fifth of four corpses. A way out of his predicament occurs to him, another revelation, and so he watches as they walk toward Cider and Juice, as they continue to the nearest row of dead apple wood, as they disappear into the night and rain.
He has not been faithful to the gangbanger creed. He has left his homeys unavenged. He can live with that.
THERE COMES A MOMENT WHEN EVERYTHING IS STILL AND RIPENS
As they make their way through the orchard without risking the flashlight, the rain stops, but the wind sighs a while longer. The trees rattle their bare limbs like dry bones, as if they were never wetted in the downpour.
Michael leads John and Nina, who still limps slightly, across the surging torrents in the drainage ditch, where the runoff passes through a culvert. The road lies dark and untraveled, and it seems they might be the only people in the world.
The one remaining gangbanger never sets upon them. Maybe he’d been sent into town to call for help before the shooting started.
Where the body of Masud was once marked by a portion of his raincoat filled with air and ballooning above the racing water, there is now no indication of him. Perhaps the coat deflated, and he lies waiting to be revealed when the flood relents, or maybe he has been washed farther south.
The Bentley stands alongside the highway, where Michael left it, such a handsome and unlikely conveyance that it might be taken for a mirage. They are wet and muddy, but it doesn’t matter what a mess they will make of the interior, for even a Bentley is just a car.
John gets into the rear compartment with the duffel bag that contains nearly four hundred thousand dollars, and he slumps on the back seat, under which lie millions more. Peering out at Michael, the boy says, “Is it over?”
“Yes. That part is over.”
“Was that the worst?”
“I hope so.”
The boy shrugs. “I guess we’ll see.”
When Michael leaves his rifle with the boy and closes the door and turns, Nina is there with him, although he thought that she had gone to the passenger side of the sedan. She puts her arms around him, her head against his chest. He embraces her, and they stand in silence. A moment has come when everything is still, when perhaps something is happening that he has not anticipated but that he is willing to accept.
THE BUSY BEE HAS NO TIME FOR SORROW
In the rain and then in the absence of rain, in the rainless wind and then in the absence of wind, Orlando Fiske lies among the dead. He’s taking time to think through his predicament. He also wants to be sure that those he failed to kill are long gone, that there is no chance he will encounter and be shot by the rifleman. As he rests in the company of the dead, an agreeable calm settles over Orlando, for no one in this moment and place is capable of deceit or violence. Nevertheless, he doesn’t want to fall asleep among them.
After twenty-six minutes as measured by his digital watch, he rises from the discreetly draped carnage around him. The rifleman has no reason to linger with the woman and boy. He will have taken them away in whatever vehicle brought him here. Nevertheless, for now, Orlando keeps the pistol ready in his right hand.
With his left, he undoes the radiant cross by plucking one flashlight off the ground, leaving the other as memorial until its batteries fail. Before departing, he plays the beam across the gable walls of the six structures, imprinting the scene in his memory, so that he can craft a story for Alana that is full of vivid details.
Leaving the buildings, he heads north into the orchard. He is overcome by the strange feeling that he is walking out of a dream, that if he turns to look back, he will find only the edge of a cliff and a bottomless abyss beyond. Being read to by Alana has made him aware of metaphor and symbol; therefore, maybe the fear that the scene he remembers was never real is an expression of his amazement that he has proved to be capable of mercy in the name of love. Or maybe the cliff and abyss are a metaphor that stands for the fate that awaits him if he can’t explain his survival to those who will rise to fill the vacancies in the gang leadership. This metaphor and symbol business is tricky, with numerous possible interpretations that conflict with one another. If only he had finished high school, he might not be so confused in moments like this.
The light by which he finds his way also reveals to him a body lying faceup in a harvesting alley. Mouth and eyes wide open, Speedo says nothing, sees nothing. What a night.
When he reaches the Aviator that Masud had been driving, in which Orlando had been riding shotgun, it stands where it broke down in concert with the other three SUVs. The front passenger-side door remains open, as he left it.
On the seat lies his iPhone, where he threw it in disgust as “Macarena” shrieked forth. The screen brightens. He winces, but no dance music ensues. The charge is at only 20 percent.
Whoever the rifleman had been, he was also a wizard, not like Merlin with his spells and formulas or itinerant Gandalf roaming all the lands of Middle-earth, but a tech wizard no less powerful than those wielding true magic. The story that Orlando is crafting—not the one for Alana, but the different one for Antoine—will make no mention of a rifleman wizard.
If the phone works again, perhaps so does the car, both having been released from the spell cast over them. He goes around to the driver’s side and gets behind the steering wheel. The key is in the cup holder, discarded there by Masud, and when Orlando presses the ignition button, the engine at once turns over.
He checks his contacts and places a call to Antoine. It’s still an hour till midnight. Antoine doesn’t hit the sack until at least three in the morning. He answers with one word, “Yeah.”
“You goin’ to Disneyworld,” Orlando says, “you gotta see me.”
Antoine breathes into the phone for a few seconds and then says, “Okay, I know you.”
Orlando gives him the number of a burner phone and hangs up. He retrieves the disposable from the console box. It rings little more than a minute after he turns it on, which is just long enough for Antoine to have found his own burner.
“What’s up?”
“Aleem he been plannin’ to whack you.”
“What shit is this?”
“True shit. Day after tomorrow.”
“You Aleem’s man.”
“Not no more. Aleem he’s dead.”
Antoine says nothing.
“So you don’t get whacked now.”
After a silence, Antoine says, “You spinnin’ me.”
“No spin, man.”
“So how it happen, accordin’ to you?”
“Aleem tries to snatch his boy from Nina. Means to smooth him into the set, get him up on it.”
“That kid’s a fuckin’ choirboy, can’t be trusted in no gang.”
“Agreed,” says Orlando. “So Nina and the kid run for it. But her car been tagged. Aleem gets himself a posse, chase her down.”
“What posse?”
“Him and Kuba, three other SUVs, six more us homeys.”
“All for that choirboy. Aleem he lost focus.”
“Agreed,” says Orlando. “He let personal shit take him away from business.”
“I been sayin’ for some time.”
“So we chase the bitch to San Diego County. She hides out in this huge old dead orchard.”
“Dead what?”
“Apple orchard. Like a thousand acres, I don’t know, nothin’ but dead trees and broke-down old buildings.”
“This gettin’ weird, man.”
“Gets weirder. Turns out she done set a trap. We go in there, we take fire six ways, gangbangers everywhere.”
“Bloods? Crips? Who we goin’ to war with?”
“They was prob’ly mustachios. MS-13. Eighteenth Street Gang. Who knows? It rainin’, dark, no one wearin’ their colors or do-rags. Heard one shoutin’ Spanish, that’s all. Won’t be no war iffen we don’t know who.”
“We don’t want no war.”
“Kills profits,” Orlando agrees.
“Who’s down ’sides Aleem?”
“Kuba, Hakeem, Carlisle, Jason, Speedo. My main man, Masud.”
“Jesus. All Aleem’s aces but you.”
“I ain’t his ace kool no more. I popped the shitface coward.”
Antoine is having trouble keeping up with the narrative. “You popped who?”
“We go in, Aleem is bringin’ up the rear.”
“That ain’t right.”
“Damn right it ain’t, him supposed to be the wolfman. Shootin’ starts, our homeys goin’ down like ducks, he turns and runs. I pull him down, we got to shoot back, but Aleem he punches my face, breaks loose, gonna run again.”
“This what I always knowed about him,” Antoine declares.
“I lose it, man. My homeys bein’ torn up and him runnin’ to save his skinny ass. So I go after him.”
“What else a good man gonna do?” Antoine says.
“Nothin’ else,” Orlando says. “So I take him down, I’m standin’ over the fucker, him dead—and I realize all the shootin’ stopped. No fool left to be killed but me.”
“So fast.”
“Blitzkrieg, man. So I hump outta there.”
“Where you now?”
“Comin’ home.”
“Where Nina?”
“Wherever she figures no one can find her. You know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t give a shit where she gone. This Aleem’s mess, not hers. Don’t you think?”
“She nothin’ to me,” Antoine agrees. “No time to find her, jack her up, when our own roof comin’ in on us. But right now it ain’t my decision.”
“Will be, we throw in together for the sake of Masud, Speedo, and the others. Got to close ranks now, focus. Most homeys known for a while how it ought to be you, not Aleem.”
“That why you call me ’stead of someone else?”
“Exactly why.”
“How long till you be here?”
“Your place—three hours. Maybe less.”
“We got the night to get down how it happened.”
Orlando adds, “And how it gonna be.”
“Break it to the homeys before tomorrow’s news.”
“Way I see it,” Orlando says, “everything is everything.”
“Everything is everything,” Antoine agrees.
“We all gonna be a better team than how we were.”
“That be truer than true. One more thing.”
“I’m here.”
“Sorry about Masud, bro. Must be hard, your main man.”
“Comes with the life,” Orlando says. “We know what price we might gotta pay to be free like we are.”
They terminate the call.
After taking time to review the conversation, comfortable with every exchange between him and Antoine, Orlando gets out of the Aviator, kneels beside it, takes a deep breath, and slams the right side of his face into the back door. The pain is bad enough to be reassuring, but he repeats the act. There’s good blood, although no facial bones are broken. By the time he gets to Antoine’s place, the bruising will be extensive. For a coward, Aleem had a hard punch.
TILT
The blinking signifier on the screen of the iPhone, in the cup holder of the agency sedan, remains stationary mile after mile. Why Michael Mace has stopped in a rural area of San Diego County and whether he has settled there for the night, Durand Calaphas cannot know. His concern is that Mace, given the unknowable powers that the Singularity has conferred on him, might discover the compartment under the back seat and then the hollowed-out brick of twenties in which the transponder is concealed. Calaphas must find the fugitive before the man knows that an agent of the ISA is close on his tail, and put a few bullets in his altered brain before he realizes he is in imminent danger.
Calaphas is little more than half an hour from Mace’s position when the rain ceases falling and the Bentley is on the move again, bearing away its millions of dollars along with the most wanted man in the game. It’s annoying that Calaphas is no longer closing the distance between him and his quarry. Looking on the positive side, however, for whatever purpose Mace had stopped, it had not been because he searched the Bentley to confirm a sudden suspicion that it was carrying an active transponder.
All will be well. Calaphas is confident that all will be well. He will never be reduced to such penury that he will need to go begging to his tedious parents, Ivor and Phyllis. He will never be dragooned into serving as a director of one—or all three—of their funeral homes, condemned to the solemn and stifling atmosphere of grief-counseling rooms and coffin-sales rooms and viewing rooms, a world of thick carpets and velvet drapes hushing away all sounds that might distract from mourning. The thick fragrance of roses and other flowers had cloyed in his nostrils so that at times he felt he must be suffocating. Having grown up, with his brother Gifford, in the apartment above the largest of the three operations, every night “our quiet and respected guests” were at rest in the basement or in ground-floor chambers, already made up and dressed to star in their pre-burial coming out the following morning or being preserved prior to costuming for a command performance the day after tomorrow. Even as oppressive as that environment had been, Calaphas acknowledges, because of the place, at the age of seven, he came to understand that a great destiny awaited him.
