Hell Bent (23 page)

“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” I said.

She said nothing.

“This probably wasn’t such a good idea,” I said. “We should’ve stuck to our plan. Weekdays for work, weekends for fun.”

“I thought this would be fun,” said Alex.

“I thought it
was
fun,” I said. “Except now I’ve got to go home.”

“I get it,” she said. “I’m being stupid.”

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “How you feel is how you feel. That’s never stupid.”

I put my shoes on, stood up, tucked in my shirt. Then I bent down to kiss her. I aimed for her mouth, but she turned her head so that I caught her beside her ear.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s how it is.” I straightened up and headed for the door.

I had my hand on the knob when Alex said, “Wait a minute, big fella.”

I stopped.

She said, “You better not forget to leave my money on the bureau.”

I turned to look at her. She was trying not to smile. “I can’t pay you for that,” I said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because it was priceless.”

She held out for a minute, then she smiled.

“Friday,” I said. “My place.”

“Friday,” she said.

Thursday morning I was at my kitchen table eating an English muffin spread thickly with peanut butter and watching the chickadees and finches flock around the backyard feeders. November had arrived, and I was mourning the fact that the season for eating breakfast outside had come to an end, when my house phone rang.

“It’s Anna Langley,” said a raspy female voice when I answered. “Returning your call.”

It took me a minute to remember. Anna Langley was Gus Shaw’s agent. She hoped to sell his photographs. “Thanks for getting back to me,” I said.

“Sorry it’s been a few days,” she said. “I just got back from—well, whatever, it doesn’t matter, out of town—and found your message. You have Gus Shaw’s images?”

“Me?” I said. “No. That wasn’t my message. I don’t know where those photos are. I don’t know anything about them. I wanted to talk to you about them.”

“Oh, well, shit, then,” she said. “What’s to talk about?”

“They’re pretty valuable?”

“If Gus thought they were,” she said, “which I happen to know he did, then, yes, they’re unquestionably quite valuable. I have several interested parties ready to talk, as a matter of fact. But no images to talk about.”

“You heard what happened to Gus?”

“I know he killed himself, of course.”

“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”

“But the police …” She hesitated. “Oh, I get it. You think somebody … those images?” She stopped. “Are you serious?”

“They seem to be missing,” I said. “Gus seems to be dead.”

I heard the click of a cigarette lighter, then the hiss of Anna Langley exhaling. “That’s wild,” she said.

“Some of us don’t think Gus would take his own life,” I said. “You must’ve known him pretty well.”

“I did,” she said.

“So what did you think?”

“I was … surprised,” she said.

“But not shocked?”

“No,” she said. “Not really shocked. Gus always had a lot of demons. Then, you know, what happened to him over there …”

“What can you tell me about those images?”

“Look,” she said, “you want to meet for lunch or something?”

“Just to be clear,” I said, “I’m Gus’s wife’s lawyer. Representing her interest in this.”

“Sure,” she said. “Of course. I don’t see any problem. I’ll bring a copy of the agreement Gus and I had. I think we’re all on the same team here. So where do you want to meet?”

“Place called Marie’s in Kenmore Square?”

“I know it,” she said. “How’s one today?”

“I’ll make a reservation,” I said.

I was at a corner table in Marie’s sipping coffee around twenty past one, wondering how flaky Anna Langley really was, when across the busy dining room I saw the hostess go up on tiptoes and point toward me. A slender woman with dark hair nodded, then turned and headed in my direction.

I stood up as she approached my table. “Anna?” I said.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “I’m so sorry. The friggin’ phone rang just as I was leaving, and …” She waved her hand in the air. “You don’t need to hear it. I don’t like to be late.” She held out her hand. “Anna Langley. I could use a drink.”

“Brady Coyne,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do.”

I managed to catch the eye of our waitress. “More coffee for me,” I said when she came over. “And for the lady …”

“Grey Goose, rocks, twist,” said Anna. She looked barely thirty. Older than that around her eyes, though, as if she’d been forced to look at things that were hard to see.

When the waitress left, Anna said, “I’m here because I’d like to get hold of Gus Shaw’s Iraq images.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Hm,” she said. “You don’t have ‘em, I don’t have ‘em. We are both doomed to disappointing each other, it would seem.”

“Maybe between the two of us,” I said, “we can figure out where they are.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” She reached into her shoulder bag and took out a manila envelope. “A copy of my agreement with Gus. You’ll see that I have the exclusive authority to represent his work for publication. Assuming Claudia is his rightful heir, everything I might be able to do will go to her, minus my commission, of course.”

I took the envelope and put it by my elbow. “I believe you,” I said, “but I’ll read the agreement.”

She smiled. “Of course you will.”

“Then okay,” I said. “We’re all on the same team. I’m glad. So what can you tell me about these missing images?”

“Just that Gus was pretty excited about them,” she said. “He sent me several e-mails from over there, all double-talk and innuendo and code words, of course. Gus was pretty paranoid. Rightfully so, I might add. What I got out of it was that he was onto a story that would make Abu Ghraib look like a sweet-sixteen party. Next thing, he lost his hand and came home and commenced avoiding me. Anyway, I didn’t—”

Our waitress came with Anna’s drink and a fresh cup of coffee for me. We told her we’d wait to order our meals.

After she left, Anna said, “So I never did learn what Gus was up to over there, and when he got back, he wasn’t answering my calls, and eventually I decided just to leave him alone for a while and try to make a living. Then when I heard he died, I remembered how enthusiastic he was about the work he was doing over there, and I got to thinking that if the photos were half as good as Gus’s stuff usually was, we’d have a treasure on our hands. So I put out some feelers in the publishing world and got a lot of good response. That’s when I called his wife. She was pretty cagey, but I inferred that she didn’t know anything about
the photos, so I didn’t push it. Just tried to make sure she understood how valuable they probably were.”

“Book title,” I said. “The Last Photos of Gus Shaw, Media Hero.”

Anna sipped her drink and looked at me over the rim of her glass. Those flat eyes were brown flecked with green. “You’re more cynical than me,” she said. “Nobody is thinking like that. Gus’s images will stand on their own, I’m positive. I’ve got a reputable foreign correspondent from the
Monitor
interested in writing text for a picture book, sight unseen.
Vanity Fair
will guarantee at least a four-page spread. PBS has interest in a special about Gus and his work.”

“All that?” I said.

She nodded. “Gus was a genius. People are beginning to realize that now that he’s gone.” She shrugged. “Anyway, without the images, it’s all academic.”

“Actually,” I said, “I might have an idea.”

She arched her eyebrows.

“It’s a long shot,” I said.

“Better than no shot.” She drained her drink and looked around. “I could use another one of these. Where’s our friggin’ waitress?”

That evening Henry and I had just finished supper—a baked potato with a heated can of Hormel chili, a microwaved package of broccoli florets, and a slice of American cheese on top of it for me, and a bowl of Alpo and kibbles for him—and I was debating whether to spend an hour plowing through the paperwork Julie had stuffed into my briefcase or see what was on TV, when the phone rang.

When I answered, a man’s voice said, “This the lawyer?”

I heard male voices and other noises in the background—a television blaring music and laughter, the scrape of tables and chairs on a wood floor, the clank of bottles and glasses and silverware. It sounded like a busy bar. “Yes,” I said. “I’m a lawyer. Who’s this?”

“Pedro. Pedro Accardo. Remember?” His voice echoed a little, as if he were cupping his hand around the receiver.

“I’m sorry. No.”

“Pete? Gus call me Pete. Everyone else call me Pedro. Gus introduce us.”

Then I remembered the Hispanic-looking guy who had been with Gus the time I met him at the Sleepy Hollow Café in Concord. “Okay,” I said. “Sure. I remember you. What’s up?”

“Need to talk to you. Quick.”

“About what?”

“Gus. What happen to him.”

“Gus killed himself,” I said.

“No, man.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “He …” His voice became a mumble I couldn’t understand.

“What?” I said. “What do you—”

“Hang on.” I heard Pedro speak to somebody. Then he said, “You there, Mr. Coyne?”

“Pedro, listen—”

“Later, man. Remember John Kinkaid and eleven, eleven, eleven, okay?”

“Yes, okay,” I said. “But tell me about—”

“Gotta go now.”

“God damn it,” I said. “Just wait a minute. Do you know anything about Gus’s photos? And who the hell is John Kinkaid?”

“No, no, man,” he said. His voice went low and conspiratorial. “Can’t talk here. Call you later, okay?”

I blew out a breath. “Okay, sure,” I said. “Or I could meet you. We can do it right now. You name the place.”

“I gotta find another phone, man. You—”

A loud male voice interrupted, and I heard the words “phone sex,” and then Pedro said,
“Chinga tu madre,
man,” and then came some cackling laughter.

I waited with the phone pressed against my ear, and a minute later Pedro said, “No good here. Call you tonight, midnight.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be—”

But he was gone.

I looked at the screen on my telephone. It read
UNKNOWN CALLER
with no return number, which meant it was either a cell phone or a pay phone or a blocked caller ID. I guessed a public pay phone judging by the voices and clatter in the background.

I figured Pedro Accardo was in Gus Shaw’s support group, and Phil Trapelo—the older guy who called himself the Sarge—had given out my business cards at their Tuesday meeting, as I’d asked him to do, and now Pedro was calling me. Maybe he’d called from the VFW hall in Burlington.

He implied that he didn’t think Gus had killed himself.

Or maybe he
knew
he didn’t. Maybe he even knew who did kill Gus.

John Kinkaid was the name he mentioned. Maybe Pedro meant that John Kinkaid was Gus’s murderer.

It was a name that meant nothing to me.

I went into my office, sat at my desk, pulled a yellow legal pad and a felt-tip pen close to my right elbow, and Googled “John Kinkaid” on my computer.

I was instantly overwhelmed.

I found dozens and dozens of John Kinkaids, living and dead. In addition to the college athletes, real estate brokers, gravestone carvers, minor poets, local politicians, honor roll students, and
poker champions, and besides the recently born, recently married, recently arrested, recently promoted, recently honored, and recently retired, and besides all those whose ordinary deaths were reported in routine obituaries, the cancers and heart attacks, the “sudden” deaths and “long illnesses,” there were, more interestingly, the bosun’s mate who died trying to save his captain when their troop transport ship was torpedoed in the North Atlantic in 1918, the all-star third baseman from the Negro Leagues who was murdered in 1947, the anti-war Vietnam vet who was obliterated in his own terrorist explosion at the University of Massachusetts in 1971, and the sixties rock ‘n’ roller who died alone on his sailboat from a heroin overdose in 1984.

Mr. Google did not identify a single contemporary John Kinkaid who had come home from Iraq, or who had reason to want to steal photographs, or who suffered from PTSD, or who seemed to have any connection whatsoever to Gus Shaw.

But there were dozens and dozens of John Kinkaids out there in the world who could confirm their own existence by looking themselves up on the Internet, and for all I knew, any one of them could’ve been the John Kinkaid that Pedro Accardo mentioned on the telephone.

It was also possible that this particular John Kinkaid was too insignificant even to exist on the Internet.

Pedro also said “eleven, eleven, eleven.” Maybe it was a code, or the combination of a safe, or a street address, or an identification number, or a math formula, but the only thing that occurred to me was the date. The cease-fire that ended the fighting between Germany and the Allies in the First World War was signed at 11:00
A.M.
on November 11, 1918—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Thereafter, November 11 was known and celebrated as Armistice Day. After World War II the United States Congress, with the concurrence of
President Eisenhower, expanded the holiday to honor all veterans and renamed it Veterans Day.

The forthcoming Veterans Day was a little more than a week away. So why would Pedro Accardo mention it in connection with the enigmatic John Kinkaid and with Gus Shaw’s death?

One of the countless men named John Kinkaid had served in World War I, although he’d been dead for about ninety years.

I shook my head. My brain swirled with information overload. The Internet was a bottomless ocean of information, and I felt myself sinking and drowning and disappearing in it.

I got up from my desk, went to the kitchen, found a bottle of Long Trail ale in the refrigerator. Henry was right at my heels. I found a church key and popped the top off the bottle, and Henry and I stepped out onto the back deck. It was a brittle night. My breath came in visible puffs. I took a long swig of ale and gazed up at the sky.

Once again I failed to identify Gus Shaw’s constellations. There were a billion stars up there whirling and rotating, expanding and contracting, exploding and imploding. But I saw no Elvis, no Snoopy, no Green Ripper. It was just a random chaos of stars. Many of them hadn’t existed for eons, but their light was still traveling through space. Others had been born centuries earlier, but their light, zipping through the universe, had not yet reached earth.