The Inner Circle (15 page)

I handed the phone over. Titus listened for a few seconds, nodding, and said, “It was no problem. Like I told you before, I’m happy to give any help I can.” Then he clicked off and stared down at the phone and started punching the keys with his thumbs.
 

I stared out my window at the sky, hoping to see Fred’s jet approaching but only spotting scattered clouds and a few distant birds.
 

“You guys have a pilot?” Titus asked.
 

“In a way. The guy we use works for a private jet company that usually serves celebrities and the ultra rich. Whenever we need a fast flight, the Kid calls them. The guy we use—Fred—he was there the first time two years back at the end of my game. Ever since then the Kid has requested him.”
 

“He doesn’t ever wonder what you guys do?”
 

“Probably, but he never asks, which is fine with us.”
 

Titus had kept his focus on the BlackBerry this entire time, his thumbs typing, but now looked up.
 

“I think I found it.”
 

“Found what?”
 

“The significance of boojum.”
 

“And?”
 

“Well, it could stand for a number of things—like did you know there was a baseball player back in the twenties and thirties nicknamed Boojum?—but I think what Carver meant—if, you know, he meant anything—had to deal with
The Hunting of the Snark
.”
 

“The what?”
 

“It’s a poem by Lewis Carroll. The reason I think it has significance is what you had written about Carver in your story—how he and his wife were even painting his kid’s room with characters from Carroll’s work.”
 

“Where did you find this?”
 

“Wikipedia.”
 

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Then what’s boojum have to do with anything?”
 

“According to this, the boojum is a particular variety of snark, which causes any who meet it to, and I quote, ‘softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again.’ ”
 

I let that sink in for a moment—a long moment, really, remembering the look on Carver’s face when he tried speaking that single word as he died—but before I could say anything else I noticed a dot off in the distance. I sat up straighter in my seat, squinting. I couldn’t make out what kind of plane it was, but I knew it was Fred and Maya. It just had to be.
 

“What is it?”
 

“Thanks for everything, Titus.”
 

I opened my door, started to get out, but hesitated. I had the two guns and considered giving Titus one of them; if he knew about Caesar and his people—not to mention he had just helped me escape Miami—it was possible his life could be in danger. But I didn’t know if the little man even knew how to fire a gun, let alone handle one, and I didn’t have time to give him a crash course. The dot in the sky had already become a splotch which was definitely aimed toward the airport.
 

“Ben,” Titus called before I shut the door.
 

I lowered my head back into the car.
 

“Remember, if you guys ever need any help, let me know. It would be an honor.”
 

He looked so lonely there for a second, so lost and pathetic, that I wanted to tell him he could come along with me right now. At least that, I hoped, would cheer him up, especially after everything he had just done for me. But the truth was there would be nothing for him to do. Carver was dead and right now none of us knew what the future held.
 

“I appreciate it,” I said. “And if we ever do need more help, we’ll definitely let you know.”
 

He managed a smile. “Thanks.”
 

The splotch in the sky had materialized into a jet, a Gulfstream G100 to be exact, most likely the same one that had flown Carver and me into Atlanta just the other day.
 

Titus said my name again, and I ducked my head back down and once again thanked him, and then I shut the door and started away from the Beetle, placing both guns in the waistband of my jeans, watching the jet as it made its descending approach, growing larger and larger, its wheels lowering and locking into place, and then it touched down and I realized I was walking even faster, almost running, not caring if it wasn’t proper protocol to stay off the runway, wanting to just leave here, to go back home, away from all of this, and then before I realized it I was running as the jet slowed nearly two football fields away and began to turn around, and I could see Fred in the cockpit along with his copilot and he said something to the copilot who nodded and said something back, and the jet slowed and stopped and the side door opened and the ladder began to descend and there was Maya, looking out at me, and I wiped at my eyes because there were tears in them, just a few, and Maya hurried down the steps and met me halfway, wrapping her arms around me, telling me it was okay, while I sniffed back the tears and told her that Carver was dead, that he was dead, that he was dead.
 

“I know,” she said softly. “I know. It’s over now. Everything is okay.”
 

I wiped at my eyes, took a breath. “I just want to go home.”
 

She nodded and took my hand and pulled me toward the jet.
 

I hesitated, suddenly remembering Titus, wanting to wave my thanks to him one last time. But when I turned, my hand already halfway up, he and the orange Beetle were gone.

Part Two

BOOJUM

25

The Kid arrived that Monday morning, two days after our fateful visit to Miami Beach.
 

Jesse had gone to the airport to pick him up. He’d asked me if I wanted to come along, but I hadn’t answered him, just sat there on the porch steps, smoking a cigarette. It was where I was still sitting three hours later when Jesse returned with the Kid, the Ford pickup truck leaving a small cloud of dust in its wake as it bounced up the rugged drive.
 

Jesse and the Kid got out of the truck, Jesse in his blue jeans and cowboy shirt, his long sideburns and dusty hat, the Kid wearing his designer khakis and red polo, a little gel in his hair. He had a laptop bag strapped over his shoulder, and as he approached the house he nodded at me.
 

“Ben,” he said, pausing at the foot of the steps. “How’s it hanging?”
 

I just sat there, smoking my cigarette.
 

He said, “I thought you quit.”
 

I didn’t reply.
 

Jesse had grabbed the Kid’s overnight bag, was trailing the Kid up to the house. Now he started up the stairs past me, just as the door opened.
 

The Kid smiled. “Why, Maya, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
 

Maya sat down beside me on the steps. “You really need to work on your lines, Kid,” she said, smiling back at him.
 

“Yeah, well,” the Kid said, shrugging. Then his smile faded and he tilted his head at me. “I thought he quit.”
 

I was still sitting there smoking, now staring past the Kid at the pickup and the trees beyond, but I could sense Maya looking at me.
 

“Yeah,” she said, “so did I.”
 

“Graham around?”
 

“I think he’s out back. With the bees.”
 

“Right,” the Kid said. “The bees.”
 

A silence passed. My cigarette was almost done but I kept at it, not wanting to flick it away until this little greeting session was over.
 

“Right,” the Kid said again. “Well, I’ll be up in Carver’s room. If I see Ronny on the way, I’ll talk to him. Otherwise, can you tell him I need to see him?”
 

Maya nodded. “Sure.”
 

The Kid stood there for another moment, nodding again, smiling. He stared at me once more, said, “Ben, it’s good seeing you,” then hurried up the steps past me without waiting for a response.
 

Maya waited until the door closed before swatting my arm with her hand. “Sometimes you can be so rude.”
 

“Sometimes?” I ground the butt on the porch step, flicked it out into the grass.
 

With an aggravated sigh, Maya got up and retrieved the butt, came back and held it in front of my face. “How many more of these are out there?”
 

I said nothing.
 

Maya’s normally small and worn face tightened. Her nose wrinkled, which meant she was ready to throw a fit, and I just sat there, waiting for it, almost begging for it. But then her features softened, and she slowly shook her head, sat down beside me on the porch step, placed her hand on my thigh.
 

“What did it look like?” she asked.
 

I reached down for the pack of Marlboros beside me on the step. Maya reached across my lap and grabbed my hand and pulled it back.
 

“Ben,” she said.
 

I looked at her.
 

“What did it look like?”
 

“What did what look like?”
 

“His last word.”
 

I had told the Kid we should keep Carver’s last cryptic two-syllable word a secret, and I had intended to, but then on the flight home I had confessed it to Maya. Why, I still wasn’t sure, and now I was beginning to regret it.
 

“Ben, you’re gonna have to talk about it eventually. You can’t keep something like that pent up inside you.”
 

Maya still had hold of my hand. I used my other hand to pull her hand off, then grabbed my pack of smokes and stood up. “I’m going for a walk,” I said, and started away before Maya could say anything else, heading toward the side of the farmhouse and turning a corner.
 

The sun was glaring down on the east side of the house, so I walked a little in the shade, lighting myself another cigarette. I put the pack and lighter back in my pocket and then just stood there, smoking, staring down the hill that crested the backyard. My eyes momentarily rested on the five grave markers. The place where we’d buried Bronson Lam two years ago, the place where Carver had buried his own son two years ago, and the place we’d buried David Resh and Vanessa Martin less than a year ago. The fifth marker stood for Larry Vaughn, who had been killed outside my father-in-law’s house two years ago and whose body we hadn’t been able to bring back to the farmhouse.
 

My gaze shifted past the grave markers, down the hill, at the apiary. Graham was down there now, moving slowly in his white jumpsuit, his round hat and wire veil covering his head.
 

I started to head down the hill, coming around the rear corner of the house, stepping out of the cool shadows into the warm sunlight, when I heard the screen door on the back porch open.
 

For some reason I expected it to be Ronny, or the Kid, or maybe even Ian, but it was Drew, dressed in jeans and his heavy flannel shirt. He came down the wooden steps, heading directly toward the barn, and didn’t stop until he glanced up and happened to notice me. A moment of indecision passed, both of us standing there, waiting for the other one to move, before each of us took a step forward and met halfway.
 

I took one last drag of the cigarette, dropped it to the ground, smashed the glowing end with the heel of my shoe. I nodded at the barn, where we stored the weapons and ammunition and four-wheelers. “You’re going shooting?”
 

A half smile passed over his scared face. “Nothing gets by you, Ben.”
 

Silence.
 

Drew said, “I saw the Kid inside.”
 

I nodded.
 

“I’m surprised you’re not in there with him.”
 

“What is that supposed to mean?”
 

“Nothing,” he said, and looked away, unconsciously touched one of the many scars on his face.
 

They hadn’t always been there, those scars. Before, when I’d first met him two years ago, his face had been round and somewhat pudgy, his chin making its slow transformation into a double. Only a year before that things had been normal for him, living with his thirty-seven-year-old girlfriend and their four-year-old son in their small row house in Elmhurst, right by the train tracks and the Long Island Expressway. Life hadn’t been great but life hadn’t been bad either, and then one morning he woke up to find himself in Kenton, Oklahoma, his girlfriend and son taken away, both of them held hostage so he would do everything Simon said. But ever since Carver had come into his life Drew had changed things, working out, eating right, and the chin that had been very close to a double disappeared. He lifted weights every day, ran with the rest of us every morning, and that round and somewhat pudgy face of his had started to become leaner, tighter, more pronounced. Then the night came when all of that changed, and the blade of a knife sliced his face several times, scaring it permanently. Not that he really cared about his face, mind you, but the fact that the damage had been done here, at this farmhouse, away from the world and Simon and his games, was what hurt most, what had become the deepest cut of all, not just to Drew, but to the rest of us.
 

“Tell me something,” I said.
 

Drew nodded.
 

“When it comes down to it, what do you think?”
 

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”