The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (45 page)

Santo finally appeared to understand. ‘Well, there had to be some.’

Rem found Samuels in the commissary. Since Fatboy’s
accident
Samuels had refused to go over the line and was in forfeit of his Strategic Placement Bonus. Samuels haunted the commissary, sat at tables with coffee nested between his hands, his skin growing whiter under the stark overheads, the lack of natural light.

Rem bought them both coffees and slid into the booth. Samuels, as insubstantial as Fatboy himself, cringed at the memory, and never spoke of the incident.

‘Did he have anything with him?’

Samuels pinched his mouth and shook his head. Rem thought his eyes looked glassy, not like a drinker, but fearful, rabbit-like.

‘He didn’t have a bag, a hold-all? He wasn’t carrying anything?’

‘He had the gun. That’s about all I remember.’

Rem looked up the hall. They could be in a school. The linoleum floor, the tiled ceiling, the sameshit double-glass fire doors. Cream-coloured walls. This could be Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, not Iraq.

‘He had nothing. He had a gun. He didn’t know how to hold it. I’m lucky it didn’t go off in my face. He shouldn’t have had that gun. He had no business being there.’

Rem thanked Samuels, and when Samuels asked him why he was asking, Rem shrugged. He didn’t rightly know, not really. Just had this notion that Fatboy had a bag of some kind, something he might have carried with him.

Samuels shut his eyes and softly shook his head. ‘Everyone wants to know where the money is.’

‘The money?’

Samuels gave Rem a long
come on, be serious
look. ‘Everyone wants to know about the money from the club.’

Just as Rem walked off, Samuels called him back. ‘On the seat. You’re right. A sportsbag. Singapore Airlines. That logo. Singapore. That’s what he had. I don’t think there was ever any money. I’m sure there never was any cash.’ Samuels talked and moved as a man disturbed from slumber. ‘It was all promises. Credit notes. IOUs. That’s all it was about. Winning. You promised money, and kept going, hoping for a perfect run.’

Rem couldn’t see what Fatboy would get out of it.

‘When people left they owed him. Fatboy was building a future. People who owed him favours. People who could help him out one day. It wasn’t about money, never was.’

Rem thanked Samuels again, and Samuels asked if Rem knew Fatboy’s name. ‘William. At home he went by Billy.’

Rem returned to Fatboy’s room, settled on the mat, and found himself sweating before he’d opened the notebook. Knowing someone’s name took away their mystery. He wondered who Billy was, back home with his family and his mother. Another timid boy. One among others, undistinguished. Plain William, borrowed from uncles and grandfathers.

He slept through much of the afternoon and woke to find email from Cathy on his cell:
Call me. It’s about Matt.

✩

For all but his last night Cathy slept separately and avoided talking with him, until, in a final capitulation she slipped, silently, under the covers beside him.

He’d taken a flight from the Netherlands via Austin the year before they married, spent time at immigration being questioned about his visa, about how many trips he’d made by officials for the Department of Homeland Security who didn’t quite understand that Schiphol Airport served the whole of the Netherlands. Rem insisted that his family came from a small village swallowed by Bergen op Zoom where people strived to live undistinguished lives, hold moderate values, the kind of people who knew their neighbours, rarely visited the city, and feared God with a powerful superstition, and he wondered, while he insisted on this distinction, why he had to attach himself to a place he hadn’t lived in for over twenty years, to people he’d worked hard to leave. He didn’t understand Halsteren when he was a child, and he held no attachment to it as an adult. His family simply lived there, and year by year, there were less of them. Nevertheless, Halsteren remained in his passport as his place of birth. For immigration these distinctions meant nothing. As a big man with a casual lope, they took him as a type. They detained Rem for four hours in an eight-by-nine space defined by six rolling screens he could have pushed aside. They left him alone, in this temporary space, not even a room, and he expected the man to return, passport in hand, to escort him to departure. He wasn’t sure how it would work, but he couldn’t see himself reaching Chicago. He missed his connecting flight and had to sleep in the terminal with the threat that these men could return, pick him out and pack him off, just as they pleased. The whole experience was so unpleasant it resolved him to marriage, although neither of them wanted to marry. The visas gave limited security. He understood that he might have chosen Chicago as his home, but Chicago had not chosen him.

On his return to Austin the same dread set upon him. He couldn’t imagine the next step and half-hoped for a call from Cathy telling him to come home, this was ridiculous, just come right back.

At the carousel a different certainty struck him. He watched bags tumble down the baggage claim and realized he’d gone too far.

On the first night Cathy went early to bed, took a mug of hot water with her, her glasses, a book, a thriller she’d bought for this specific night, switched the TV on, quiet and low, as if this was normal, or better: as if this was something long anticipated, a treat she was determined to enjoy. She settled naturally on her side of the bed, rested her glasses and the book on her stomach and wondered what she should do next. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted, and looked about the room and wondered how it had come to be furnished in this way, not through any one decision, but through a gradual accumulation: a dresser from her mother, the built-in wardrobe Rem had salvaged and fronted with mirror. The TV, large, flat-screen, paid on credit they hadn’t yet settled. She watched her reflection. The light from the TV picked out the rounded shapes of her feet, her knees, her stomach and breasts, all softened by the quilt, her face shone a little greasy, and she was alarmed at how surprised she looked, as if it wasn’t Rem that was missing, but part of her body.

He wouldn’t call, she guessed, so she sent an SMS, typed a hug and a kiss at the end of the message, and thought this hypocritical but necessary, then turned to her side so she wouldn’t have to watch herself. He’d come back, she didn’t doubt, he didn’t like Austin in any case. He’d be back in two days, four, tops.

She decided to sound perky. Practical. She’d call, if he didn’t answer she’d leave a message.

When the home phone rang she looked at it in surprise.

‘Hello? Rem?’

‘My cell’s flat. I’m calling from the dormitory, plugged-in. They’ve given us rooms. You know those movies where the parents take their daughter to college? It looks nothing like that. What are you doing?’

‘I’m in bed.’

‘I woke you?’

‘No. It’s early. I thought I might read.’

‘The people I’m with . . .’

‘I was going to ask.’

‘. . . are from the Philippines. No one speaks English too well. We haven’t been fed. They brought us from the airport, told us we couldn’t leave. They’ll pick us up at seven tomorrow. I’m not sure what they’re going to do with us. There’s one row of showers, two toilets – don’t ask – and a snack machine. There’s a rumour that we don’t get paid until we’re actually in Iraq.’

She thought to tell him not to do this, to walk out, face whatever trouble came their way because of it, but to come right back. They could pay the company back for the flight, somehow make everything right with Geezler, move on and forget this. She didn’t know how, but they would figure this out.

‘What are you reading?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t started.’

‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Cathy kept the phone to her ear long after Rem had hung up. The only decision she wanted to make was whether she would take Western or Lake Shore Drive to work the next morning.

She read the last chapter of her book because she didn’t want to start something that would end badly.

✩

Immediately after speaking with Cathy, Rem called Geezler, to let him know about the arrival, the chaos of the place, and sound off a little about the squalid lodgings.

Mid-ring he changed his mind. Intuition told him that this wouldn’t be the worst of it. Geezler didn’t need to hear every detail. He should concentrate on what mattered, essentials, not make reports day by day, but digest the experience first.

His phone rang before he could pocket it. Geezler on an unlisted number.

‘You wanted to speak?’

‘I thought better of it.’ In truth Rem had lost the mood.

Geezler said he’d take anything Rem had to offer. ‘The whole point is to hear your take. You understand? That’s why you’re going. I want your perspective.’

Rem started again on his day. ‘I’m in a room with nine men from Fiji and the Philippines, who think they’re heading to Dubai. Their contracts say Balad. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t have their passports. This can’t be legal.’

Once again Geezler listened and was ready with questions, and on occasion, an explanation.

‘These people are in transit. Technically, they aren’t in the country. We’ve had trouble before. If they have their passports they disappear.’

Rem wouldn’t drop the subject. ‘Benigno. Beni. He’s thirty-seven, he looks like he’s fifty. He has a fourteen-page contract busy with small print. Only four out of nine in my room can read English, and everyone is going to Iraq and they don’t know it. How can they not know?’

Geezler promised to look into Beni’s case, and asked Rem to find the names of the other men. Although, he said, his arena was Europe, which limited him in certain regards. It wasn’t
if
he could do anything, but
when
.

‘I don’t want to play my hand too early. I’m operating in someone else’s territory. There might be a more apposite time for me to be involved.’ To be honest, he said, he hadn’t anticipated so many issues, certainly none as serious as this. He asked Rem to keep an eye on Beni. ‘Let me know when he receives his deployment date. I can intervene at that point without making undue trouble. Make sure you have his full name.’

Rem accepted the situation. Geezler at least was listening, he paid attention. Rem understood the constraint under which he worked. Geezler had set up the whole operation, had sent Rem into the field to discover these problems. While Geezler hadn’t said as much, he guessed that he’d put his job on the line. If discovered Rem would lose nothing. Geezler stood to lose plenty.

He took another quick look at the facilities before turning in, and what he saw depressed him. It wasn’t so much the lack of cleanliness as the smell and disarray of too many men in too small a space. Everyone was to be woken at five, a schedule laid out the order for showers and breakfast.

Unused to sharing a room with men, Rem slept uneasily.

The first four days in Austin passed quickly, on each day the information changed, the briefings became longer, repetitive. First they were heading to Iraq via Dubai, then Bahrain, possibly Düsseldorf, then definitely Bahrain. Once in Bahrain they would be held in a hotel close to the airport while they were processed, which could take anything up to a week because the parent company, HOSCO, needed to figure out exactly where they were needed.

Geezler called on the sixth day to notify Rem that a placement had been confirmed and transit was organized for the next morning. Geezler wished him luck, and Rem said that he was ready. Rem called Cathy with the news.

‘You don’t have to do this. If you don’t go you won’t be letting anyone down.’

‘It’s six weeks.’

‘You don’t have to go.’

‘Six weeks. We’ll owe nothing. Tell me what you want.’

‘And what difference would it make, Rem?’

The fact, unspoken, lay clear before them, if she asked him not to go, he would not go.

✩

On his last afternoon in Chicago, Rem visited Mike in his house on Ravenswood.

Mike’s wife opened the door, looked less than pleased to see him. ‘When are you taking that dog back?’

Rem said it wouldn’t be with them much longer.

‘It’s cruel,’ she said, blame in her voice, ‘it’s not right keeping something in a cage like that. And I don’t like lying to Cathy.’

‘I’ll deal with it.’

As she walked away she muttered,
Make sure you do
, then told him that Mike was waiting in the back.

The houses on Ravenswood lay close to the tracks. Trees sheltered the yards and darkened the stoops and porches, and while he used to enjoy this – shade in the summer for beer and end-of-day business – it struck him now as oppressive.

He found Mike sat at a table. Geezler had settled an advance of three thousand, enough to pay the most urgent outstanding medical bill and give Mike a little of what he owed.

Mike stood up, squeezed past the table and asked Rem if he wanted a beer.

Rem spoke while Mike was out of the room. Easier to talk without facing him, to speak with a little pep and verve, to make the news sound inconsequential.

‘I found work. It’s a short job, but it means I’ll be able to settle everything.’

‘Short?’

‘Six weeks, guaranteed bonus. No tax, so I can settle with you when I get back.’

Mike stopped at the door, a beer in each hand.

‘No tax, so that’s abroad, right?’

Rem nodded. Mike’s head made a slight jolt. ‘Is this what I think it is? Because you don’t have to do that.’

‘It’s a lot of money. In six weeks I can clear everything I owe.’

Mike set both beers on the table. ‘Rem, if this is Iraq, I mean, we can all wait. What’s done is done. You don’t have to do this. Don’t go on my behalf.’ He scratched the back of his head. ‘You should have just cut us loose. That’s what you should have done. You have this whole thing mixed up. Other businesses fail. It’s not your fault. As soon as you didn’t have the jobs you should have let us go.’

Mike popped the cans open, slid one across to Rem.