Silencer (16 page)

Easy, easy, Anthony.

The girl had her hand inside his shorts again. ‘I guess my charms ain't doing it for you. For extra, I could blow you.'

Dansk didn't like putting his cock in anybody's mouth. He'd tried it but he'd felt uncomfortably vulnerable, thinking what would happen if the woman had a brainstorm during the act, or some form of feminist-bitch revenge agenda, and decided to bite a chunk out of his dick.

Suddenly he caught her hand and squeezed it. Her bones were tiny. He imagined he had a small delicate bird trapped in his closed palm and how simple it would be to crush it. Squeezy-oh and snap.

‘Ow,' she said.

For a moment Dansk found himself contemplating the notion of pulverizing the hooker's small hand. He thought of the noise the bones would make as they broke, a bag of brittle little sticks. As a kid, he'd once shot a pigeon with an air rifle, and he remembered how it dropped off a ledge and lay broken-winged and bloody on the sidewalk, a sickly substance oozing out of the beak. That bird had been a long time dying, spasming on the ground. His mother had told him,
You don't kill God's creatures, Anthony
.

It's only a pigeon, billions of them in the world, and God cares about one?

His eye is on the sparrow, sweetpea
.

‘Hey,
hey
, you!' the girl said, tugging to be free of him.

He released the girl's hand. He felt lopsided. The zip of the air rifle, the pigeon falling, what had he experienced at the time? A little surge of power or some kind of regret, he couldn't target it now. A kid blowing a bird away for the hell of it, just because the boy had a weapon and the bird happened to be where it was at that particular moment in time. Things converge, eddies of pure chance, like Galindez in that goddam river. Some things you can't foresee.

The girl rubbed her knuckles and said, ‘I bruise easy, mister.'

Dansk gave the girl fifty bucks, two twenties and a ten. She was still rubbing the hand he'd squeezed and giving him a wary stare. He had an urge to grab her again and this time press his fingernails into her veins until he'd drawn blood.

She dressed. She had it down to a quick-getaway art as a safeguard against loony clients. He turned aside from her. He listened to all the sounds she made, the snap of panty elastic, tights rolling over flesh like a second skin, the meshing of a zipper.

‘You're a real dipshit, buster,' she said.

Dipshit. He had an image of Amanda Scholes's face, and he wondered if there was some bizarre connection between his failure with the hooker and the encounter with the lady prosecutor, a distraction on a level he hadn't been aware of. He thought of the Sanchez woman phoning. OK, so her state of mind was one of dislocation, but that wasn't the point. She might have been lucid. It was no way to run a business like this. You couldn't depend on luck. You had to shape your destiny.

He walked quickly across the room. The girl had the door halfway open. He kicked it shut. ‘Dipshit, huh?' He realized he was breathing a little too hard. He gripped her shoulder. He could feel bone and imagined he heard her heart beat. Anger foamed through him. He wasn't thinking, he was listening to this tide and the persistent voices it carried.

‘I'm a dipshit? That what you called me? A dipshit?'

She said, ‘Don't fucking touch me, I warn you.'

The girl tried to shrug his hand away but his grip was too tight. Just do it.
Do it, Anthony
. He punched her in the mouth, slammed her against the wall, punched her again and her head snapped back, but somehow she managed to get her teeth round his wrist, nipping his flesh with her teeth. It was like the pain of catching your skin in a zipper. He pulled his arm away and grabbed her by the hips and spun her round, striking the side of her face with an open palm. She crumpled into a crouching position. He stared down at her and the tide receded in his brain and then there was hollow silence.

The girl looked up at him. Already there was a discolouration around her mouth. He made a slight motion of his hand and she flinched, pulling her head to one side.

He turned away from her, didn't look as she got to her feet and opened the door. He heard a quick intake of her breath, as if she were struggling against tears. He studied his hand. He thought, You move certain muscles and a hand becomes a fist, a weapon. You give in to an impulse and discipline dies inside you. A moment of rage.

And here's the kicker:
weirdly pleasant
.

He heard the door close. She could go to the cops, he thought, but she wouldn't, not in her profession.

The problem with rage is you can't focus it: it overflows, goes in all directions, you strike out at whoever's within range. But you don't need rage. Everything's under
control
. You were Mr Smooth. You set out your wares and the former prosecutor, a discerning customer, listens to your pitch, and before she knows it she's buying. She's buying your plastic, your whole story, and then she's homeward bound, carrying her stack of purchases from Honest Anthony's Bazaar. She's home safe with her lover, her worries alleviated, her concerns eased.

But …

You never really know. Other people are mysteries, planets unto themselves.
I'm at a loose end right now
, she'd said. This bothered him. A bright woman, formerly very busy, with too much time on her hands. A little bored. She wouldn't be the type to sit around crocheting or inclined over a cookbook studying a recipe for fucking bouillabaisse. And you couldn't see her serving soup in some tent-town for the homeless roaches of the nation. So what does she do with her time?

Dansk's Law:
You can never sit back and get complacent. Another person's life was alien territory and you needed to map and monitor it until you were absolutely certain. And if it came right down to it, you needed to bring pressures to bear.

He was a master at pressures.

He walked up and down the room for a time, turning possibilities round and round. She'll drop it, she won't drop it. His fingers were beginning to ache from the impact of his punches. It wasn't a bad sensation.

He picked up the phone and dialled the number for the decrepit motel in south Phoenix where McTell and Pasquale were staying. It was called the Hideaway Knolls, situated on a busy intersection with nothing remotely resembling a knoll in miles.

McTell answered, first ring.

Dansk said, ‘She was in the desert, McTell. The prosecutor was in the goddam desert at exactly the same time as you and your dufus associate. Have you any idea how close you came to having an eyewitness? She heard the
dogs
, McTell.'

‘She see us?' McTell asked.

‘You got lucky. But that's not the point, the point is carelessness. The point is keeping your eyes and ears open and making absolutely goddam sure there's nobody around when you work.'

‘How were we meant to know somebody was out there? It's a big dark fucking place, the desert.'

‘You don't pay close attention, Eddie. You smell blood and everything else flies out the window – like the possibility of an eyewitness. I'm trying to run this business in a professional way.
Professional
, McTell. You know that word? You heard it before?'

McTell said, ‘I don't unnerstand your beef, Anthony. If she didn't see us where's the hassle? It's history. I still say surgery's the answer.'

Dansk ignored this. ‘I want you and Pasquale to meet me. There's a Denny's joint off the interstate on Thomas. You'll find it. Forty-five minutes.'

He hung up and stepped inside the bathroom. He wanted to shower. He wanted the good feeling that came when pressurized water tingled against your body and all the grime and germs you'd accumulated during the day went swirling in grey-white foam down through pipes and into the rancid labyrinthine dark of the sewers.

29

Amanda drove until she came to a cocktail bar about a mile from her house. She parked outside, thinking about Rhees, who'd be in bed reading some heavy academic tome through the little half-moon glasses that made him look ecclesiastical. She went inside the bar, which was deep in shadow. A few lonesome drinkers, a mulatto girl playing the piano and singing ‘I Got You Under My Skin' in a feathery little voice.

She asked for a gin and tonic, fidgeted with a coaster, rolling it round between her fingers. She looked around the room. A sign in one corner read, ‘Rest rooms. Telephone.' She didn't move at once. This behaviour came firmly under the category of sneaky activity, but the idea of further disapprobation from John didn't enchant her.

She scanned the bar again: shadowy faces, strangers, the girl at the piano. She was thinking of Dansk's advice.
Take a vacation. Go far away
. She tried to imagine his investigation, but she had no idea what it involved, and this niggled her. She was beset by an incomplete feeling, like a Scrabble tile she couldn't use, a solitaire card that wasn't playable.

Go ahead,
satisfy yourself
. Cut off that troubling little hangnail of doubt you have. She walked in the direction of the telephone. She took from her jacket the sheet of paper Dansk had given her. She fed a coin into the slot and dialled the number.

A woman's voice came on the line and said, ‘The Carlton. How may I help you?'

‘Anthony Dansk,' she said.

‘One moment please.'

Amanda listened to the ringing tone. Dansk answered, a little breathless.

‘This is Amanda Scholes,' she said. ‘I hope I didn't wake you.'

‘I was just getting out the shower.' He sounded cheerful.

‘I realized I didn't give you our phone number,' she said.

‘I figured you'd be in the book.'

‘We're in the Phoenix directory, but you might need the out-of-town number, which is unlisted.'

‘You've decided to go away?' he asked.

‘We have a cabin upstate.'

‘Sounds nice. OK. Pencil's at the ready.'

She gave him the number. He said, ‘Got it.'

‘Don't forget me,' she said.

‘No chance of that, Amanda.' He said good night.

She hung up the phone, lingered, tapped her fingers on the directory.
No chance of that, Amanda
.

She picked up the handset again and hesitated, then she pushed a handful of coins into the slot. She imagined a twenty-four-hour hotline, an operator who would pick up. Instead, she received a recorded message uttered by a man who sounded as if he had severe laryngitis.

‘Department of Justice. You have reached the office of Anthony Dansk. Mr Dansk isn't available to take your call at present. Kindly leave a message. Your call will be returned as soon as possible. There is no need to leave the date and time of your message because this is automatically recorded. Thank you.' She put the phone back. An answering machine with a croak in its throat. The desk of Anthony Dansk. The recorded message in a voice that wasn't his.

She wondered about this all the way back to her car.

30

She was aware of sunlight against her closed eyelids and the sound of the doorbell ringing. She heard John get out of bed and leave the room. She drew a bedsheet round her face and tried to get back to sleep, but Rhees returned and said, ‘You've got a visitor.'

She opened one eye. The sun was a slit of revolting light. ‘Who?'

‘Dom Concannon,' he said.

‘What ungodly time is it?'

‘Eight-forty.'

‘What the hell does he want at eight-forty?'

‘Who knows? I'll brew some coffee,' Rhees said.

Amanda sat up. She dragged herself slowly inside the bathroom, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair, then decided she didn't need to look her best. It was only Concannon, after all. She entered the living-room in her robe and blinked at Dom, whom she liked well enough except for the fact that he was always bright and switched-on, irritating if you'd only just awakened.

He was sitting on the sofa, long legs stretched out. ‘Got you out of bed, eh?'

She said, ‘Just don't do your stage Irish bit, promise me.'

‘And here I was practising bejaysus.'

She sat down facing Concannon. He had a big frank face and untidy fair hair. His family had emigrated seventy years ago from Cork. He was an expert on the subject of Celtic religious artefacts. Like Rhees with his sporadic Welshness, Concannon was another herb in the American stockpot.

‘Just tink of me as yer postman,' he said.

‘You promised, Dom,' she said.

‘It comes over me and I can't for the life of me stop. What can I say?'

‘As little as possible would be considered a start,' she suggested.

Rhees came in from the kitchen with a jug of coffee and three cups on a tray. He set it down on the table and poured. Amanda sipped and waited for the brew to kick in.

‘What's this postman business?' she asked.

Concannon took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘This came for you care of the office. It looks like it's been in the wars.'

She looked at the creased brown envelope. Her eyesight was out of focus. ‘You didn't come just to bring me this, did you?'

‘I've been missing you around and the letter gave me a good excuse, and anyway I happened to be in the vicinity. So, how are you doing?'

‘OK for a person whose sleep has just been rudely interrupted by a fake Irishman. Don't you have cases to try or something?'

‘Matter of fact, yeah. There's this interesting little thing I've got in court in a couple of hours. Some guy selling humongous parcels of Northern Arizona that aren't his to sell. Complicated fraud, involving misuse of the US mails. The guy says he's been framed by an associate. Same old, same old. Your friend Randy Hanseimer is defending.'

‘Kick ass, Dom.' She took another mouthful of coffee and turned the envelope over in her hand. She still wasn't focusing properly. She made out her name scribbled in caps with a ball-point. The stamp was stuck on upside down.