Dead and Gone (24 page)

“Capgras?”

“Capgras Syndrome. When a person believes someone has stolen his identity and become his ‘double.’ They’re always serving ‘Public Notices’ in the personals, warning the world about the impostor. They usually provide a lot of ‘authentication’ info about themselves. Like their Social Security number, or some place they’re
going
to appear in the future.”

“My goodness!”

“There’s also the ‘lost passport’ game. Where the relay-man puts a notice in the papers saying he lost his passport, offering a reward, you know. But the trick is, he gives the
number
of the passport he supposedly lost. And the country it was issued from. That’s more than enough to send a pretty lengthy message in cryptography.”

“But why would you expect such people—?”

“I’m just playing the odds, Gem. Most of them, sure, they’re lost inside their own heads, or running their own games. But, for a few of them, Lune is the oracle. I just don’t know which ones, so I’m just spraying and praying, see?”

“Loon?”

“L-U-N-E,” I spelled it for her.

“Ah! French, yes? It means ‘moon.’ ”

“I’m sure that’s the root: ‘luna.’ But, in my man’s case, it’s short for ‘lunatic.’ ”

“But if he’s so intelligent—”

“Oh, he’s a genius, all right.
Past
a genius. But he’s … I don’t know the word for it.
If
there’s a word for it. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When it comes to making sense out of a whole bunch of what looks like random human-behavior data, Lune is the man.”

“I could still help,” she said, hands on her hips.

“I’m not saying you couldn’t. It’s just that—”

“I could help now. Listen to me, please. Couldn’t you try the Internet? Contact the websites of the same sort of people you’ve been reaching out to over the phone?”

“I wouldn’t know how to—”

“Then be grateful you have a woman, you stupid man.”

H
ours later. Gem at her laptop: hair gathered into a thick ponytail, her back as straight as a West Point plebe’s, fingertips playing the keyboard like a pianist. If she knew I was watching her, she gave no sign.

“Those sites you’re sending e-mail to, won’t they be able to trace back to you?”

She glanced up just long enough to give me a look so full of sweet indulgence it made me feel … geriatric.

I
t was dark when she came up on deck. I’d been there for a while, sitting in a castoff easy chair, thinking. She perched on the arm of the chair, apparently not bothered enough by the weather to put on anything over her T-shirt and shorts.

“Did you think I was bratty before?”

“When?”

“When you asked me that question about being traced through an e-mail.”

“No. Ask a stupid question and—”

“You didn’t think I was saying you were stupid!”

“Not stupid. Ignorant. And you were right.”

“It was very bad manners on my part.”

“You were busy. Absorbed in what you were doing. And you were doing it for
me
, to boot.”

She swiveled her hips and draped her legs across my lap.

“You are a very forgiving man,” she said softly.

“And you’re a very sarcastic little bitch.”

“I
meant
it!”

“Yeah? Okay. Sorry. I just … overreact to that whole ‘forgiveness’ crap.”

“I don’t understand.”

I reached up, grabbed a fistful of her thick, glossy hair, pulled her face down so it was close to my mouth. “Is it important?” I asked her.

“To me, yes. It is very important.”

I leaned back. Gem dropped into my lap. I took my hand from her hair and put it around her shoulders. She made a little noise. Then she settled in against me, waiting.

“When I was a kid, people … did things to me,” I told her. “Ugly, vicious, evil things. But I didn’t die from any of them. When I was older, I spent some time in a war. I didn’t die from that, either. You know what they call me?”

“A man who—”

“No,” I said, cutting her off. “A ‘survivor.’ For both. And that’s wrong.”

“Why is it wrong? You
did
survive.…”

“No. In war, they’re
supposed
to try and kill you. Not in families. It’s not the same. And that stupid label, it
makes
us all the same.”

“Children of war and …”

“Children of the Secret. All of us who were raised by fucking beasts. Like it’s a brand we can’t shed. But we don’t all go the same way. Some of us, we … copy whatever was done to us. Some of us just hurt … ourselves. And some of us, we hunt … them.”

“So. You are one of those … hunters. And you do not forgive.”

“In therapy—the kind they give you when you’re a kid and they know you’ve been … hurt—they tell you, if you want to heal,
first
you have to forgive. You have to ‘let go’ of your rage.

“But you know what, little girl? When you’re a kid, when they hurt you and hurt you and fucking
laugh
when you cry about it, rage is your friend. It stands by you. Stays close. Carries you when you can’t walk on your own. It’s cold and clear and … 
clean
. When everyone else is lying, it gives you the truth. And the truth is, any fucking ‘therapist’ who tells you to forgive the people who hurt you—they’re working for the enemy.”

“I have no enemy to forgive. Or to hate.”

“You’re a child of war, like you said. But your parents did
their
job, honey. They did their best to keep you safe. You can’t hate a whole national insanity. But tell me you wouldn’t kill Pol Pot if he was standing in front of us right this minute.”

“I … don’t know.”

“I would.”

“You? Why? You had no—”

“I’d kill them
all
, sweet girl. I swear I would. Every one of them.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know what to call them. Torturers, maybe. The freaks who like to play with electricity in dungeons. The gang rapists. The death-camp guards. The secret police. The mutilators. It doesn’t matter what you call them. I’d know them. Every single one. And if I could ever get them all in one place, I’d be the biggest mass murderer in the history of this planet.”

She shuddered against me. “Wouldn’t that make you as bad as—?”

“To some people. Not to anybody who counts with me.”

“Is that why you are looking for …?”

“What did you think, Gem? Somebody tried to cap me. I don’t know why, but I’ve got to figure they’ll try again.”

“They could not find you now,” she said, urgently. “You said so yourself.”

“There’s two ways to be safe, child. One is to hide. The other is to hunt. When I was a kid, I only had one way. I figure, whoever they are, they had their chance. Now I want mine.”

She pressed herself against me so hard it felt as if our clothes had melted from the heat. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my turn.

“I told you,” she whispered, finally. “I told you, before. Ever since I was a small child, I made decisions very quickly. I don’t wait. I am your woman now. So even though I know what you want … I will help you do it.”

A
fter she went back downstairs—she called it “going below,” but even the
sound
of that made me nervous—I tried to make some decisions of my own. In my world, people deal themselves in—or out—all the time. But there’d be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I was chasing. What I wanted was more of what Pansy had taken with her last breaths.

I didn’t know what Gem did for money, but I figured her for an outlaw—no way she’d be connected to Pao’s network otherwise. And my best guess was that the Mexicans were about as legal as angel dust. So it all came down to her backing my play because she was my woman.

I couldn’t work that part out. I guess, when Gem made decisions, she didn’t just make them quick, she made them alone.

G
em got
The Oregonian
on Sundays, and always picked up
Willamette Week
, too, an alternative paper that covered a different beat. I spent a lot of time reading them, trying to feel my way into the territory.

One day, I came across a piece about a con who stabbed another inmate. Turns out, in Oregon, you shank another guy Inside, you have to attend mandatory “anger management” classes.

I almost fell off my chair laughing. Prison stabbings have about as much to do with anger as rape does with sex. Knifings are always about a debt, or revenge, or self-defense against a rape. Or territory. Or a new guy blooding into a gang. Thing is, unless the joint is race-war tense,
nobody
carries all the time—it’s a sure ticket to the hole. You want to stick somebody Inside, you plan it carefully. Even though the favorite target is the back—that spot between the bottom of the ribs and the pelvis, so bone doesn’t turn the blade—you still need cover if you’re going to get away with it. And a place to toss the blade as soon as you’re done.

I’ve known prison assassins with a dozen kills and no busts. Wesley was the master. Nobody ever saw him mad. Nobody ever saw him coming, either.

The Oregonian
handled straight news real well. Good combination of local and wire-service copy, although most of the coverage was about Portland, and the weather got a lot more attention than it would in New York. The
Willamette Week
was more about culture, and it told me one thing I filed away—Portland was a blues town, for serious.

But nothing in the personals of either one looked even remotely promising.

I went back to working the phones.

I
was on the line with a guy in Detroit who said he knew a guy who knew a guy and—if I had the money—he might be able to bridge a connect for me … when one of the other cellulars buzzed. I hung up on the hustler, said:

“What?”

“Call for you, okay? Say you go Al-blue-quirk-key.”

“Albuquerque?”

“Yes. What I say. You go Thursday. Go to airport. Two o’clock afternoon, walk outside to parking lot. See big car with stripes like tiger. You wait there. Okay?”

“This
Thursday, the next one coming?”

“Say, ‘You go Thursday.’ ”

“The person who called, what did he—?”

“Not man, woman. I say, ‘Who calling?’ She say: ‘Give message to Winston.’ Then say what I just say now, okay?”

“Okay, Mama. Thanks.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes for a minute. Maybe it was longer. When I opened them, Gem was standing in front of me. “Can that computer of yours do airline schedules?” I asked … before she could ask
me
anything.

L
ess than half an hour later, she was kneeling on the floor next to my chair, scraps of paper spread out before her.

“There are many choices,” she said. “Several different carriers, all going at different times of the day.”

“Any of them get in with plenty of margin before two in the afternoon?”

“Oh yes. All leaving from Portland. Let me see.…” She crawled around on all fours from scrap to scrap, oblivious to the sweet show she was putting on. Or not—I know less about women than I do about stamp collecting. “Ah! You have … one, two, three … at least four separate choices. It just depends on how you want to be routed.”

“Routed?”

“Yes. None of the airlines have direct flights. You can change planes in Phoenix, Oakland, Denver, or Salt Lake City.”

“I don’t care which airline. It’s not like I’ve got frequent-flyer mileage to worry about. All I need is something that gets me in there around noon or earlier.”

Gem took a
very
close look at one of the scraps on the carpet. A long look. I guess I do know a little more than I do about stamp collecting. “All right, then,” she finally said. “Let us make it Phoenix.”

“Great. Do you have a safe credit card you can use to make the reservation? I’ll pay you in cash.”

“Yes, of course. But you will need a—”

“I’ve got all the documents I’ll need to show them at the airport, girl. That’s not a problem.”

“How many days will this take?”

“I don’t have a clue. What difference does it make?”

She looked at me over one shoulder. “How could I pack intelligently if I do not know how long we will be gone?”

“I can pack my own—” I started to say. Her depth-charge eyes stopped me cold, and I realized what she was really saying.

“D
o you like it?” Gem asked me on Monday.

I looked at the inch-and-a-half color photo she was holding in her palm. Gem, staring straight ahead, the barest hint of a smile on her face. “It’s okay,” I told her. “Not exactly a glamour shot.”

“But it looks like me, does it not?”

“Sure.”

“Good,” she said. And disappeared.

“C
hantha Askew?”

“Of course,” she said, holding the passport with her picture and that name open so I could see it clearly. “Chantha is a good Cambodian name. And Askew, that is yours. Or the one on your passport, yes?”

“Yeah. But—”

“You don’t want to drive to Albuquerque,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have asked me about flights, much less to book one. There is some risk in flying. It’s not as … anonymous. You have not ever used your own passport before, have you?”

“No,” I told her, wondering even as I spoke how she could know that.

“And you have no fear of the people who constructed it for you revealing—?”

“No!” I cut her off sharp. “Not a chance.”

“All right,” she said, so softly that I realized I must have shown something in my face. Wolfe sell me out? She’d die first. And I’d rather
be
dead than to ever know about it if she did.

Gem was quiet for a minute. Then she gently pushed at me until I sat down, and followed me down until she was in my lap.

“They don’t have your name, the one on your passport,” she said softly, not having to spell out who “they” were. “And they don’t have your face, either. They don’t know who you are. Or where you are. You are hunting
them;
not they, you. But that doesn’t mean they don’t
know
you.…”

“What are you trying to say?”