The Nobody Page 4

  He asked, "Was I a bad father? Did she hate me?"

  "What?"

  "My daughter. Did she hate me?" He held the photo between his hands and stared at the girls, all of them adorable, sleek, and muscular, on the verge of womanhood. "She was strong. I wasn’t. I stuffed my face with fries. I had to sneak cigarettes. I was weak. She must’ve hated the sight of me. My wife as well. They must’ve both–"

  "No, no listen to me–"

  "They had power. At the end, my wife, she stood up in the bathtub bleeding to death, she refused to give in. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything at all. I was weak. I couldn’t do anything."

  Annie too showed some real strength. Her face firmed. "Is that what you’ve been thinking? You doted on them. You and your wife were in love in a way I wish Phil and I were ever in love, even at the beginning. As for your daughter, you know, most of the time, mothers and daughters are the ones that share a special rapport. But with you two, you were as close as any two people I’ve ever met. You went to every PTA meeting, every parent-teacher conference, to all the special events. Homecoming, the parades, the games, the tourneys, sometimes even the practices. You loaded up your SUV with the girls, all their friends, and shuttled them all over town. Took them out for dinner, celebrated when they won their regionals. You did everything for her and she knew it. She loved you dearly. Everyone did. You had no enemies. None of you had any enemies."

  Someone had.

  Someone had connected to the killer and drawn him back to the house. Cryer, who couldn’t feel much of anything at all, still felt that.

  "What else can I do for you?" she asked.

  "Names and addresses. Where I worked. Friends. Anything you can recall."

  "The police checked. They interviewed everybody."

  "Not closely enough. He knew us. The man who did this knew us."

  "But how can you be so sure?"

  "I’m sure."

  She touched his face, hands to his cheeks, again as if to kiss him. His lips knew her name but didn’t know her kiss, and never would. She realized it and said, "What do you plan on doing?"

  Cryer said, "When I bleed, I bleed for this."

  "What?"

  "When I cry, I cry for this."

  "I don’t under–"

  "This is my mission."

  "Your–"

  "Yes, my mission. I’m going to kill him. I’ve got to kill him."

  Annie walked across the room to get a pad and pen, not quite staggering but almost so. Cryer had broken her. He thought that, weak and disgusting as he might have once been, at least he’d also been loved. It was something he couldn’t afford this time around.

  He sat on the end of the bed and waited until she finished writing out her list. When she was done, she folded up the sheet of paper and handed it to him.

  "Thank you for your help," Cryer said.

  "Dee moont," she told him.

  17

  His feet got him back to the halfway house. Boss was nowhere to be seen. Mikey and Evelyn looked highly sated and a little sleepy as they sat on the worn couch in the day room smoking joints rolled to look like regular cigarettes, drinking from paper cups, and watching television with the droolers. They turned to him and mumbled small talk and made introductions. Cryer smelled Four Roses on their breath.

  He went to the pantry, unlocked the door, and found Boss still out cold on the floor. He went through Boss’s pockets, found a baggie of cocaine, a handful of joints, and wallet stuffed with four hundred and ninety bucks.

  He kept the cash and put everything else on the kitchen table. He went through the cabinets until he found the bottle of cheap whiskey. He wet a dish towel in the sink, carried Boss to the nearest chair, dumped him in it, and washed the blood from his face. Boss roused and began to cry out from the agony of his broken wrist.

  Cryer put his hand over Boss’s mouth and said, "Don’t make a sound. Here’s some whiskey, coke, and weed. Use whatever you want to kill the pain. But don’t you make a sound."

  You had to give it to him, Boss was a man of serious appetites. He swallowed three gulps from the whiskey bottle, snorted directly from the bag, wiped his nose, and then lit himself a joint. Soon his eyes drained of anguish and filled with a calm contentedness. Boss started to smile.

  "Okay," Cryer said, "now we’re going to have a chat. Then you can have Mikey or Evelyn drive you to the hospital, or call an ambulance if you want."

  "It still hurts, man."

  "You’ll live."

  "You can’t take over the house, man, I’m in charge. I’m the boss, not you."

  A needle of distant rage pressed through Cryer’s chest, ramped his heart rate up, nearly made him reach out and snatch Boss’s other wrist and squeeze that one too until the fine bones cracked and crumbled together.

  But almost as soon as the strange, detached emotion made itself know, it dissipated. "I don’t want to take over the house. I’m not going to be staying here long anyway."

  "What do you want, man?"

  "You three run a nice little store out of here. Reminds me of what used to happen on the ward. Smuggling in all kinds of contraband, with nobody but deficients and catatonics and droolers around to see your action."

  "My arms hurts, don’t keep me here all day long." Boss puffed harder on the joint, took another swallow of the Four Roses. "I already asked you, what do you want?"

  "I’m going to kill somebody and I need a gun."

  The admission didn’t mean much to Boss. "I don’t deal in guns. I’m strictly into the shit that people enjoy."

  "You know people who know people though, right?"

  "Right, right."

  "I want a gun."

  Boss, grinning now, getting higher. "Crazy motherfucker, who are you going to off?"

  "Listen to how crazy this is. I’m going to kill the man who killed me."

  18

  Cryer returned to his room across the hall from the bathroom with the claw-foot tub. He would have to think twice before he showered in there.

  There was a note on the night stand saying he had a meeting with his caseworker at nine in the morning. A Miss Avery. She was supposed to try to help him get a job, find his own apartment, all the things that no one would ever let him do because they didn’t allow lunatics to work in their shops or live in their neighborhoods.

  But he had to go through the motions, the same as she did, until he fell through the deeper cracks in the system and wound up on the street or back in the bin.

  His muscles were tired, but his mind was on fire. Being on the outside for the first time in a year, reestablishing contact with the life he’d led and forging ahead with his mission had set him all the more firmly in his purpose.

  Cryer stared at his daughter’s picture for hours. He went through names the way he and his wife probably had before the girl was born. Emily. Sarah. Noel. Margaret. No, not Margaret, he didn’t like Margaret. Maria. Dawn. Jane. Sara without the H on the end.

  Eventually he tried to sleep, but Mikey and Evelyn were getting freaky again. Some of the other nutjobs were arguing how directly the 1790 Critique of Judgment applied to the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. Insane, but not so stupid. Harvard professors went just as out of their heads as drug addicts, postpartum depressives, nervous wrecks, and guys who’d suffered significant trauma to their pre-frontal lobes.

  In the night, his dreams, or perhaps memories, took shape.

  He sat several rows back on the indoor bleachers and watched the girls diving and swimming.

  The sound of their splashing, as if they were trying to get away from something, made him perk up in an odd but manageable terror. That churning action of the water was the kind of wild noise you expect to hear if your kid is being chased around the shallows by a Great White shark.

  His daughter’s lithe form lifted from the edge of the pool in one graceful surge of composed motion, and she stood framed in a shaft of light thrown down through the large plate glass windows
overhead.

  He felt a swelling of pride–not for her swimming technique or the fact that she was a top athlete, but simply because she was already so beautiful, and every day becoming more so. She flipped her hair out of her face, and, as she turned and prepared to dive from the edge again, spun for an instant in his direction, grinned and gave him a slight wave.

  Milly had finished her laps but had swallowed a little water on her last heat. The coach, a petite woman barely any taller than the girls on the team, approached her with a towel, patted her back, and helped dry her off. Milly retreated to a table set up with fruit juice. She took a cup and moved to the first row of bleachers where she drank quickly and began encouraging her teammates to swim faster.

  His daughter, breaking from the water, rose from the lip of the pool, walked around the edge, drew a towel from folded stack, and moved first to Milly where they exchanged a few excited words, and then came climbing row after row towards him.

  He strained with worry, afraid she’d slip on the heavily shellacked bleachers, wishing she’d put on her slippers first, as he held out a hand to reach for her, to pull her close.

  Saying her name, his daughter’s name, his girl’s name.

  He awoke–what he thought was an awakening–to find the little fucker that had been inside his head was back again, lying stretched out on his pillow, as if he’d been whispering in Cryer’s ear all night.

  The tiny version of himself that should be dead but wasn’t stared into Cryer’s eyes, placed his tiny hands to the sides of Cryer’s chin, and said to him, "Thees ount."

  19

  Miss Avery the caseworker never showed up in the morning. In a few days a harried woman with a briefcase jammed with files would sit in front of him with a lot of excuses about red tape and overwork, and she’d have him sign papers that meant nothing to him or anybody else, ask a lot of questions with no answers, and leave him watching cartoons.

  Boss had found his way to an emergency room and now his wrist was in a streamlined cast. He must’ve told a pretty convincing story because he walked around as if his street cred had been given a big boost. Defender of the crown, hero of the hour. Maybe he said the house had been broken into and he’d saved the loonies’ lives. Maybe one of the nuts had attacked him. It didn’t matter.

  Boss was finishing his rounds, handing out medication, making sure everyone had showered and remembered to wipe their asses. He caught Cryer’s eye and motioned to the kitchen.

  At the table, Boss said, "I made a couple of calls. Give me a day or two."

  "Sure."

  "You’ve got to know, up front, that if I do this for you, you’re out of here. I can’t take a chance you’ll freak out and start shooting people up and this will somehow get back to me. You get what you want, you’re gone."

  "That’s fine."

  "You got somewhere to go?"

  "No."

  "No, of course not, if you did you’d be there instead of in this shithole, right?"

  "Right."

  Shaking his head, Boss had that look like he wanted to say, You’re out of your mind.

  As if that should surprise him. As if they hadn’t already established that. As if Cryer wasn’t here for that very reason.

  20

  According to Annie’s list of names and addresses, the company Cryer had once worked for was called Intel Six Securities Inc. He got mixed up on the buses and spent twenty minutes going in the wrong direction. Then he stood around waiting a half hour to take the crosstown line, but eventually he managed to get to the right part of the city.

  He walked six blocks to a huge industrial development centered on an enormous and breathtaking glass building. INTEL loomed in two story high letters. It certainly made an impression.

  Cryer walked inside the lobby and a girl at a desk asked him if she could help him. He didn’t know how to respond.

  He waited for his mouth to say the words that would get him back into his office, where his colleagues had once clustered together, taking three martini lunches and putting his heavy bill on the Gold Card business account. He smiled and his lips didn’t do what they were supposed to do.

  "Sir?"

  He searched the lobby, trying to find something that would make his body respond. He tried to focus on the elevators; maybe a certain floor would get him rolling. Sixth? Ninth? Did they have penthouses in industrial park buildings?

  "Sir?"

  "Ah–"

  "May I help you?"

  He said, "I’d like to see the director of Intel Six Securities, please."

  "Do you have an appointment with Mr. Ferman?"

  "Yes. Yes, I do."

  "Your name?"

  "Johnny Guitar."

  "Johnny...Guitar."

  "Yes."

  She scanned her computer screen. "I’m afraid I don’t have you listed, Mr. Guitar." Her smile didn’t falter, even though her eyes started to spin a little as she realized she might be dealing with the beginnings of a situation here.

  "Someone dropped the ball then. Please tell Mr. Ferman that his old pal Johnny’s here to see him."

  21

  She told Cryer to take a seat in the waiting area, and then whispered at length into the phone.

  With a name like Intel Securities, Cryer figured some tough rent-a-cops would be by soon to escort him out. They’d be extremely polite but firm, block his path and body check him towards the front door.

  Then he’d have to throw a scene, create a real stir, until he got people rushing out here to take a look at what was happening. Maybe someone would recognize him.

  Instead, only one man appeared, dressed in a thousand dollar suit, with a hundred dollar haircut, but smelling of cheap cologne. It was the scent that got Cryer’s brain squeaking along again. His mouth watered. He tasted cocktail sauce.

  "Mr. Doyle," the secretary said, "this gentleman would like to see Mr. Ferman, but he doesn’t have an appointment."

  "Thanks, I’ll take care of it, Cecily."

  Doyle approached, already recognizing Cryer. The look on his face proved it. Fearful, shocked, disbelieving, and a little glad. Cryer glanced up at the high corners of the lobby and saw the security cameras. Doyle had seen him on some monitor someplace and figured out who he was.

  "It’s you," Doyle said, gripping both of Cryer’s shoulders. Not quite a hug, but close. "I can’t believe it."

  "Hiya."

  Doyle examined Cryer’s face closely and said the name that was there and wasn’t there. "You don’t even have any scars. When I heard what had happened, I thought, hell, when I heard, I thought. Well you know, of course–I thought you’d never get on your feet again, never get out of that institution. But you look fine,. Hell, better than fine, except you need to dye your hair. But you’re trim, look at the muscles, you–"

  "Right," Cryer said.

  "So what’s with this Johnny Guitar shit?"

  Cryer just smiled. It was the only thing he could think to do. He hoped he didn’t look too slack-jawed and stupid. He stared at Doyle trying to see a buddy, someone he might’ve gone bowling with, sat around a barbecue pit with having a few beers. But he just couldn’t see it, and sharp-eyed Doyle immediately caught on.

  "You don’t know me at all, do you?"

  Cryer waited, and after a moment his mouth finally moved. "Joe. Joe Doyle."

  "That’s right."

  The guy took Cryer by the arm, gently, like leading a frail old man, and ushered him down a series of halls, past an enormous room filled with rows of cubicles. Then up an aisle beyond another series of secretaries to a group of large offices. No wonder the elevator didn’t spur anything, he’d been on the ground floor. At least he thought maybe that was the reason. None of this looked familiar to Cryer.

  "We sent a fruit basket."

  "Thank you."

  "We also helped out when your insurance wouldn’t cover certain expenses."

  "That was very kind of you."

  Doyle wasn’t the director, he was the tro
ubleshooter. The go-to guy. Always worried about something. Always checking the cameras to see who was about.

  This time he tried to sniff out whether Cryer was going to put the squeeze on him, maybe sue the company or ask for some kind of settlement. It didn’t matter if it made any sense, you could tell Doyle was someone who always expected the worst. His wariness made him almost aggressive.

  Might as well come right out with it; see if it made any difference to the guy. "I’m not here for any money or to disrupt your company in any way."

  "Why are you here?"

  "I need to find out if I had any enemies."

  "Enemies?"

  "Yes."

  "Because you were attacked."

  "Yes."

  "You think it might have been someone from Intel?"

  "I don’t know."

  Doyle shook his head. With that slight action, he stirred the air. It carried the stink of the bad cologne into Cryer’s face. "You couldn’t have made any enemies at Intel."

  "Why not?"

  "You didn’t work here."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You were employed by Intel, but only as a private consultant. You worked from your home office, on the computer. You only came in once every three or four months, to meet with me and discuss various projects."

  "What projects?"

  Doyle went off on an explanation that Cryer immediately decided had nothing to do with anything and promptly forgot it all. He’d been a boring son of a bitch in his other life. No wonder he’d found so much solace in greasy burgers and a couple of drags of tobacco.

  "But I was at work," Cryer said. "Coming home that night...the night my family and I were attacked. I was out. I thought I was arriving home from work."

  "Like I said, you didn’t need to come in often. And I was the only one you ever met with, and always during the early afternoon. We usually sat in the board room, had a small lunch or appetizers–"

  Cocktail sauce. "Shrimp. Jumbo shrimp."