The Dart League King (11 page)

A dartboard
was a perfect circle, the center of which, the bull’s-eye, measuring just over an inch in diameter if both the green single and red double were taken into account, was suspended at exactly five feet eight inches from the floor, if the establishment in question could be trusted to hang it right. The foul line, from behind which one was required to throw, was at a distance of seven feet nine and a quarter inches from the board, so that Brice Habersham, who was five feet six exactly in the shoes that he wore to dart matches, and who held his dart at precisely eye level prior to releasing it, his eyes five feet one inch from the floor, approximately (he’d resisted many times the urge to measure the exact distance between his eyes and the top of his head, though he estimated it to be five inches) had to throw a dart (the release point nine and a quarter inches from his eye, he calculated, though he realized the calculation was rather convenient) at an angle that would achieve a one-inch rise in its trajectory per one foot distance
to the board (a 1:12 vertical/horizontal ratio, in other words) in order to hit the bull’s-eye at its center. This calculation could only be correct, though, if one assumed the dart traveled in a straight line from the release point to the board, a result that would necessitate throwing the dart much too hard to maintain pinpoint accuracy, given the dart’s relatively light weight. The one extrinsic force that Brice Habersham had to figure into his finely tuned calculations, then, was gravity. Everything else could be determined logically; gravity you had to feel.

Brice Habersham took none of this as seriously as he used to. Gone were the days of the tournaments, when he could focus his attention on the game and the comfort of his scientific approach to it. Gone were the days of practicing long hours in the basement, all alone with Bach or Mozart on the stereo, while upstairs Helen lay in bed with the blinds drawn and the blindfold over her eyes and the jar of skin cream near at hand and the bell on the nightstand in case she wanted to ring him for something, which she often did—a glass of water, an offensive ray of evening sunlight that pierced the blinds, an aching in her limbs or a prickling in her skin, for which he could do nothing but say, “I’m sorry,” and stand silently and weather her abuse.

Now it was just a game he played every Thursday night, not nearly as well as he once had, but still well enough to beat the likes of the members of the Garnet Lake Dart League, Russell Harmon included, though Russell might think otherwise. He wouldn’t be able to play at all if not for the fact that he could consider it mildly work-related, and so explain it to Helen, who grudgingly accepted his absence for two hours’ time.

For over thirty years now Brice Habersham had worked for
the Drug Enforcement Administration, and his career was winding down, more the result of Helen’s illness than any deficiency in his work. He had always been an effective if somewhat unspectacular and uncreative member of the agency, and his relocation to this small town in Idaho, away from the busier and more high-profile cities of the Midwest, had come at his own request. He needed to travel less, on account of Helen.

His traveling upset her and aggravated her condition, or so she said, or so her doctors said. Brice Habersham supposed it couldn’t be denied, since during his last few extended trips Helen had barely been able to function on her own in the most basic respects—cooking meals, taking a shower, monitoring the amount of pain medication (or alcohol, at times) she was using to relieve her various ailments. Brice Habersham believed that, in fact, Helen could manage just fine on her own if she chose to. She sometimes did choose to—when her sisters came to visit, for instance—and when she had made the choice to do for herself rather than have Brice do for her, it would have been hard for anyone unfamiliar with Helen to find anything wrong with her at all. She had seen a veritable army of physicians and psychologists over the years, and there was wide disagreement among them regarding the degree to which Helen’s illnesses were real or psychosomatic. Brice Habersham didn’t doubt for a moment that they were real to
Helen
—she was far too proud a woman to carry on a sham year after year. But he believed deep in his heart that the roots of Helen’s illness lay not in any physical condition but in a deeply held conviction that her marriage to Brice—her life with him from the time she agreed to a union that she did not want from the start but merely accepted as inevitable—had been a terrible waste, a slow, relentless
desiccation rather than a life of fertility and joy. This was how she felt, Brice Habersham knew, and as a result it had become her habit over the years to rely on him as a servant and a nurse-maid since she didn’t want him as a husband. He wasn’t sure whether or not he made her physically ill, but whether physical illness led to her dependence, or her dependence led to a belief in physical illness, the result was the same—Brice Habersham had to be there to care for Helen because she could not stand the thought of suffering all alone.

So the agency had found him this assignment and set him up as the proprietor of the gas station/convenience store, where he put in some time each day to maintain the appearance of legitimacy, and in fact he had become somewhat interested in the details of the store’s operation, the inventory of odd items like pork rinds and engine lubricants, the conversations with the delivery people, the regulations concerning fuel dispensing, the relationships with his employees, etc. And then there were the meetings in private locations with the local and state police and the few community members who were privy to certain details of the operation, and there was the time spent gathering all of the various pieces of information he had obtained from others or obtained through his own surveillance, all done in his office at home alone, with one ear out for Helen and her bell.

So Thursday Night Dart League was a simple opportunity for relaxation, although tonight it would be much more than that. Tonight, at some point prior to, during, or immediately following Brice Habersham’s singles match with Russell Harmon, he would excuse himself, step outside, take out his cell phone, and call the police. Then, when Russell Harmon (and possibly one or two of his friends, judging by the look of things) made his
way out of the 321, he would be searched, arrested, and charged with possession of narcotics. Russell Harmon would be the bottom feeder, the first and lowest link in a chain of arrests that would lead, hopefully, to the breakup of a large smuggling ring operating out of the small towns in northern Idaho and eastern Washington and across the Canadian border. This was the plan, but already a complication had arisen. This particular complication had walked through the door a little while ago—Vince Thompson, sitting at a table in a corner, nursing what appeared to be a facial injury (blunt force trauma, apparently), and demonstrating signs of agitation that the police should be informed about, but which weren’t worth the risk of blowing the entire setup by making a phone call to someone he knew at the station. Vince Thompson was not supposed to be here at all, and what Brice Habersham needed was not a reason to have him arrested, but a means of getting him safely out the door and on his way to somewhere else. Vince Thompson was supposed to be arrested later, after Russell Harmon and perhaps his friends had provided enough incriminating evidence on Vince Thompson to help the charges stick, if in fact it came to that. Whatever species of no good that Vince Thompson was contemplating on this particular evening would have to take place somewhere else and be left up to chance in the matter of its resolution, which was regrettable, because Brice Habersham had a particular aversion to the vagaries of chance. But regrettable or not, Vince Thompson and all of those people unfortunate enough to cross his path tonight would have to fend for themselves. The problem was that he seemed to be here on account of Russell Harmon, which was going to make it difficult to get him to leave.

The best course of action at this point, Brice Habersham decided, was no action at all. He had time, for now, to wait and see if the situation changed. There was not much to do, therefore, but wait for his turn to play Russell Harmon in the “showdown.” Brice Habersham stood at a table behind the foul line, feeling an impatience that was registered only by the clacking of his flights and an occasional glance at his watch. The match tonight was lasting longer than it should have due to the delayed start, which was unavoidable since a gas station proprietor must appear to care about the theft of his gas, and due to Russell Harmon’s prolonged absence after his doubles match, which was probably unavoidable only from Russell’s perspective, and which Brice Habersham suspected might have something to do with the arrival of Vince Thompson. The length of the match was of some concern to Brice Habersham, since the longer it lasted, the more anxious Helen would become, and if the match continued long enough it might even lead her to pick up the phone from the bedside table, and, claiming later that she had forgotten his cell phone number, dial 911 to talk to the police. The few occasions on which she’d done this were sources of great embarrassment to Brice Habersham, never far from his mind now when he sat with members of the local force examining evidence. Or, even more embarrassing, he might find her, as he had once before when he’d come home late from work, wandering the neighborhood streets in a pathetic shuffle, barely dressed, her arms crossed in front of her, shivering from the cold, saying that she assumed he had abandoned her. Yes, Helen was making it difficult to do his job these days. He had explained to her in as vague a way as he could about what would be required of him tonight, and how it
would take some extra time and how he might be home fairly late, but the whole process was being slowed already, and he would undoubtedly have to call her at some point, either before or after his call to the police.

Now the second singles match was nearing its completion, and Brice Habersham stifled a yawn. Vince Thompson still sat at his table, his eyes glued apparently to the back of Russell Harmon’s head. A sad situation. Russell Harmon owed Vince Thompson money, that much seemed clear, and it squared with the fact that Russell had stopped buying from Vince Thompson some time ago, Brice Habersham knew, at which point Russell had dropped off the radar, whomever he was buying from now (because they knew he was still buying, the nervous clenching of his jaw at this very moment telling the whole story, although the nervousness itself could also have something to do with Vince Thompson) not being important enough to come under observation. But when it came time to start questioning, Russell Harmon was the man Brice Habersham intended to begin with, because he knew Russell Harmon would talk, and talk freely, because he saw himself as nothing more than a casual user, probably, and would be scared to death. He was exactly the sort of happy-go-lucky fool who would wander right into something like this unsuspectingly, and who would tell everything he knew as soon as he found himself in trouble. He would be charged with possession. They would scare him with the gravity of the charges and then let him talk his way down to a misdemeanor. Then Vince Thompson would be placed under arrest, and the real work would begin.

To Brice Habersham, Vince Thompson was an interesting character. As far as they’d been able to discover, he was dealing
only in cocaine and a little bit of pot, a tangential and rather archaic figure in the new narcotics game along the border, which involved the shipment of coke to Canada in exchange for kilos of what was called “B.C. Bud,” a potent form of marijuana grown in the backwoods of British Columbia and smuggled in as of late, the DEA suspected, via hastily constructed tunnels. Vince Thompson was just a conveniently placed pawn, a minor piece who had, nevertheless, a long association with one of the primary suspects, according to sources, a shadowy figure whom Brice Habersham knew quite a bit about through secondhand information, but had not yet been able to locate or name. That would be Vince Thompson’s job, and whether Vince Thompson went to prison would depend on how much and whom he knew, and Brice Habersham had begun to hope, strangely enough for Vince Thompson’s sake rather than his own, that he knew a lot, and would be willing to spill it.

Because there was something about Vince Thompson that Brice Habersham had almost started to like. He had conducted several casual conversations with Vince Thompson at the convenience store, where Vince often came to buy beer, and had found him an animated and knowledgeable (if somewhat angry) commentator on local history, events, and trends, including the growing problem of meth addiction, interestingly enough. Partly, this was no doubt the result of Vince Thompson’s “business” interests—with homemade meth labs popping up all over the county, there was little demand for his commodity anymore—but he also seemed to feel a genuine moral repugnance at the thought of parents using volatile chemicals to cook up drugs while their babies crawled around on the floor, and at the droves of burnouts now winding up in the jails and
prisons, costing the taxpayers money with their rotten teeth. Was it possible to be a virtuous drug dealer? Was there such a thing as a “classic” pusher, a throwback to some nostalgic past of the illegal drug trade? If so, Vince Thompson was established in Brice Habersham’s mind as the prime example. He kept regular hours, going to his job at the apartment complex on Cedar Street five days a week at the same time every morning. He was a regular at several local bars, but never stayed out past midnight. He sold his cocaine almost exclusively to a fairly consistent group of customers who came to his apartment during daylight hours. He was very likely crazy, Brice Habersham knew, but even his craziness had a sort of consistency to it—a constant pent-up bitterness, a dam that could be burst open by the employment of any number of simple phrases such as “How are you, Vince?” or “Are you enjoying this nice weather?” And the flood of expletives would ensue. Vince Thompson’s volatility was so predictable, in fact, that he could almost be Brice Habersham’s alter ego, the yin to his yang, both of them rigidly self-defined in completely opposite fashion.