The Upright Man (5 page)

For a moment the earth too felt insubstantial, as if it could sway and tip and fade. He took another step away from the gully, and it settled. He’d made it.

Looking back and forth along the other side confirmed what he’d suspected: hard going in both directions. Whereas on this side it was going to be a relative stroll.

Nine feet, instead of hundreds.

“Thank you,” he said into the silence.

The voice said nothing. Up above, the sky was turning gray.

HE
WALKED FOR TEN MINUTES
,
STRAYING RECKLESSLY
close to the edge. For the moment, in his own small world out here in the trees, things were good. It seemed to be getting colder, unbelievably, but he could take it. He could do stuff, it turned out. He could walk on air. He wasn’t surprised when he spotted his backpack below, even though it was largely covered in snow and would have been easy to miss. His luck had rebooted, that’s all. The world was looking after him, for once. He held on to a small tree, leaned forward, and beamed down at it. It was surrounded by disturbances in the snow, no doubt caused by his feet and hands as he tried to take flight.

But no
bear.

He moved on, keeping to the lip of the gully until he came to a place where he could scramble down. He noticed some broken branches and, using his newly acquired bush sense, guessed this was probably where he’d fallen the night before. The second descent went much better, with
only a slightly hectic slide at the end. He at least reached the bottom on his feet. Feeling as if he was completing some kind of circle, he limped over to the bag.

It lay open, glass glinting inside. Next to it was a bottle, empty. There were a few scattered packets and a handful of the pills themselves, unnaturally blue. All in a little nest, a clear patch with the wall behind, the stream a way in front, bushes on either side. Tom stared down at it all, feeling like a ghost.

All at once his mouth filled with water, and his stomach lurched.

He took a hurried step backward, not wanting to be too close to the backpack for fear of it pulling him back into the night, and then suddenly he was sitting down, the impact juddering up through his spine, the bushes flickering and wavering in front of his eyes.

After a few minutes’ deep breathing the pain abated a little. Could be hangover. Could be the sight of the pills eliciting a “Don’t do that again” response from the brain in his guts. It could actually just be violent hunger. It was hard to tell. His body had turned into a Tower of Babel. Everything below his throat felt as if it had been replaced by the operational but incompatible gastrointestinal tract of an alien species: it was saying things, and saying them loud, but he didn’t know what they were.

Oh, he felt bad.

He hunched forward involuntarily. He was shivering now, too. Shivering hard. With a twist of real fear he realized he felt broken, damaged somewhere deep inside the core. He looked up at the sky and saw it was now darker still, a speckled and leaden gray. It looked like it was going to snow again, this time seriously.

What was he going to do?

Even if there were enough pills left, he didn’t believe he’d be able to take them. He didn’t think he’d be able to do anything, ever. There was no way forward. Nothing to do except sit, but how could he sit when he felt this bad? Vodka would at least make his insides feel warm. The prospect was not in the least appealing—in the light of
relative sobriety he was prepared to admit that he preferred his vodka with tonic water and a slice of lime, in moderate quantities, and drunk
somewhere warm
—but it was all he had. Die the man’s way, he’d thought. Or something like that. He couldn’t really remember what he’d been thinking back in Sheffer. It seemed a very long time ago.

He pushed himself forward onto his knees, one arm still wrapped around his stomach, as if that might help. He reached out to the backpack with a hand that was shaking badly. Just the shivers. Just the plain old been-out-all-night shivers. Nothing worse. Please. Not a sign that his whole system was fizzing and sparking like a cut electric cable.

He touched the lip of the bag, and then stopped.

He pulled his hand back. There was something that didn’t look right. Spots of something on the broken glass at the opening to the bag. It had a once-bright but now dull quality that he recognized. There were quite a few instances of it on the back of his hand.

Blood?

He pulled himself closer, wincing. It certainly looked like dried blood. A couple of splashes. He turned his hand palm up: no new cuts. He’d have felt it, even this cold. He was pretty sure he hadn’t done it the night before either. He’d had no need to put his hand near the broken glass.

He picked up the bottom end of the bag and lifted it. A clattering lump of stuff fell out. Broken glass iced together. A whole pack of pills he hadn’t gotten to. Bits of plant, presumably accumulated by the previous day’s stumblings. Aha—a last quart, unbroken.

And a couple more red-brown spots on a piece of glass.

Tom carefully picked up the shard. It was blood, and he was certain it wasn’t his. He’d upended the bag the night before to get what he needed. He hadn’t stuck his hand in there.

But the bear evidently had.

It couldn’t have smelled food—there wasn’t any in the bag, never had been—but the scent of alcohol must have been overpowering. Maybe it knew the odor already, from rooting through bins at the edges of small towns. And
that’s why, presumably, it hadn’t chased him. Too busy trying to get a drink.

Tom hurriedly put the piece of glass back down. The reality of what had happened in the night had previously been sealed behind hangover and darkness and a few molten snatches of sleep. This wasn’t. This was right here in front of him.

He’d very, very nearly been attacked by a bear.

Christ.

He levered himself to his feet. This wasn’t a good place to be. He didn’t want to be here when something big got the scent again and decided to come back for a second look. He grabbed the unbroken bottle out of the mess and put it in the backpack. As he prepared to go he noticed something stuck in the bush to his right.

It took a moment for him to work out that it was hair. Quite long hair, dark brown. A few thick strands, caught in the sharp upper twigs of the bush.

He tried to picture a bear. He knew they didn’t have short fur, like a cat or something, a pelt, but these hairs were a good six to nine inches long. Could that be right? Were bears that shaggy?

Tom suddenly had a very strong desire to be somewhere else, regardless of how hard it was getting there. His body would just have to make the best of it.

He limped quickly out of his nest of the night before, and looked around for the torch. Then he saw the footprints in the snow and realized it hadn’t been a bear after all.

AT
JUST AFTER EIGHT A
.
M
.
IN
N
ORTH
H
OLLYWOOD
, Officer Steve Ryan was sitting in a patrol vehicle waiting for Chris Peterson to come back across the street with coffee. Officer Peterson was taking a while because he’d be grabbing a quick bite to eat while he was at the stand, which he thought Ryan didn’t know about but after two years you understood an awful lot about the person you shared a car with. Chris had done this sneak-eat thing pretty much every morning for six weeks because his wife was into some complex health magic, which meant that there had to be effectively no edible food in the house
at all.
He was being stand-up over it and more or less sticking to it with her—can eat this, can’t eat that, can’t eat much in fact and none of it at the same time—even though being a cop on a diet made you feel like an ass (and was an invitation for other cops to rip the piss out of you, especially the women). So if he was sneaking some jump-start carbs by wolfing a pastry before his shift—and he was, because he always came back looking down the street and wiping sticky fingers on the back of his pants; plus he volunteered to get the coffees every morning now, whereas in the past he had to be kicked out of the car with both feet—then Ryan wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. He knew how it
was with wives. As he sat there waiting, eyes squinting against the slanting light coming in through the windshield, he was secretly grateful for an extra five minutes to get his head in gear. He felt tired and his eyes were dry and his shoulders ached. He had been up talking with Monica until three. It had been the usual subject, discussed in the usual way, reaching the usual lack of conclusion. It wasn’t that he didn’t want kids: he absolutely did. It was just that they had been trying for more than two years (month in, month out, in, out, no pun intended) and the process was beginning to lose its sparkle. Doesn’t matter how much you love your wife, or how attractive you found her still, being required to perform at very specific times—then and only then, the urgency of the need retreating to about nil for the rest of the month—it soon stopped it from being something you thought of as recreation. It became a job, and he already had one of those. True, hadn’t been much upward progression there either, but at least he had hopes, wasn’t debarred from progress by brute biology. He was getting friendly with some of the detectives. Not being pushy. Just listening, trying to understand what they did, how they thought. Just because it never worked out for his old man didn’t mean it was going to be the same for him. It could happen that way too. He’d seen it. Right place at the right time, a pair of hands in a trophy arrest, could be you’re seconded onto a team. Suddenly you’re not just a stiff in a car out checking windows and breaking up domestic disputes (Ryan knew about wives, of all kinds, and he’d learned a great deal about husbands too) and chasing crackheads down alleys while their friends hooted and jeered and threw bottles at you. Suddenly you’re part of a unit and from there to getting out of uniform didn’t have to be too far at all. It was all a matter of hard work and luck, and Ryan didn’t mind either of those. No, the stuff that wore you down was the parts where no amount of work seemed to make a difference, where the luck simply wasn’t there and wasn’t coming and you couldn’t seem to explain that to someone who had their heart set on the world being the way it was supposed to be, instead of the way it was.
Monica got very upset when they talked about it and he didn’t blame her. It made him sad too, sad and tired and depressed. He wanted to be a father. Always had. Man, he’d even consider that shit with the test tubes, assuming they could afford it. He’d said so last night, that they should look into it, and that helped a little though then they went into a discussion of how they couldn’t possibly afford it and so the whole thing was still a swirling vortex of despair. He said maybe they
could
afford it, if they saved, didn’t take a vacation for a couple years, if he made the squad. She said no, they couldn’t. He said yes, maybe. She said no, and started crying . . . and so it went, until he didn’t know what was left for him to say and it was three A.M. and nobody had been made any happier and he
really
had to go to bed. She’d been a little quiet when he’d left that morning. Probably just wiped out. He’d give her a call in a little while, check that she was okay. Assuming he ever moved from this spot: what the fuck was taking Chris so long? In the time he’d been gone, he could have gone to a Denny’s and sneaked a whole breakfast complete with home fries and French toast. Ryan leaned across the passenger seat, caught a glimpse of his partner up at the counter, shoving something in his mouth. He smiled, sat back. Whatever. Let the man eat. The radio was quiet, for the moment. It wasn’t like the city would run out of crime and they’d be sent home without pay. That didn’t seem likely at all.

“Good morning,” said a voice.

Ryan turned to see a guy standing on the pavement by the car. He was wearing worn green combat pants and a dusty gray vest. The sun was behind his head. He was tan and his hair was cropped short and he wore small round glasses. He looked like the kind of guy you might see busking on a street corner, or running a Pilates course down on Venice Beach. He didn’t look like the kind of guy to do what he did next, which was pull out a big handgun from behind his back and shoot Steve Ryan twice in the head.

BY
THE TIME
N
INA GOT THERE THE ROAD WAS CORDONED
off and a decent crowd had already gathered. A lot of civilians but a lot of cops too. They were standing in clumps, looking angry and impotent, largely staying away from the bench where a tall redheaded cop was sitting staring down at the pavement. Other officers, one male, one female, stood on either side of this man. The woman had a hand on his shoulder. The male was saying something. It seemed unlikely that either of these well-meant gestures would be making Patrolman Peterson feel any better about the fact that his partner had been shot dead while he was across the street feeding his face.

She parked and walked quickly across the road, seeing Monroe was already present and being harangued. A couple of cops put their hands up as she approached, but she had her card ready.

“Nina Baynam,” she said. “Feds.”

Sometimes she said Feds or Feebs rather than FBI, and sometimes it made a difference, heartily using a more casual term or one they might employ themselves. Not this morning, evidently, and those three letters had not been a passport to respect even before Waco and allied screw-ups had given everybody new angles from which to bust their balls. On every body-language wavelength the cops broadcast a single question: what the
fuck
are you doing here?

Nina was wondering the same thing. She walked over to Monroe, who turned away from two other cops and started talking hard and fast without preamble.

“Two witnesses. One saw it from a second-story room in there”—he pointed across the street at a battered-looking building with bleached-out signs offering weekly lets at suspiciously low rates—“and the other was at the coffee stand. Ryan and Peterson arrive about seven-thirty; Peterson goes across the street, leaving Ryan in the car. Ryan has his eyes shut some of the time. He doesn’t see a short-haired white male in glasses, trim build, dressed in either green and brown or brown and gray, coming down from there and approaching the vehicle with a hand behind his back.”

Her boss pointed again, this time up the shallow rise of
parking lot that led to the entrance to the Knights, a two-story courtyard motel. “Guy walks straight down here and stands next to the patrol car. He says something and then takes his shots. Bam, bam. Then he’s gone.”

“Gone how?” Nina said, turning to look around. “The guy’s partner is, like, thirty feet away.”

Monroe nodded toward an alley a little farther along the street. “At the speed of sound. Found the gun up there. By the time Peterson’s heard the shots, checked Ryan, started running, it’s too late. The shooter’s vanished.”

He started walking toward the motel. Nina kept pace.

“Nobody knows anything about Ryan except he’s a decent cop. Not the brightest, uniform for life, but doing a good job. No one has anything about him being on the pad or dirty in any way. So it looked like they just have a random psycho cop-killing until someone talks to the manager up here.”

The entrance to the Knights was wide enough to drive a car through. There would be no reason to do this, however, because the inside held only a small and scrubby courtyard with the long-dead remains of a small concrete fountain. A few plants were trying to prove life could triumph anywhere. They looked dispirited. On the right was a cinder-block addition holding ice and Coke machines. Cops were milling all around the other side, stepping back reluctantly as Monroe led Nina into the glass-fronted office on the right. They had the air of people who’d been stopped from doing a job they thought was theirs. There were four more cops inside the office, along with a fat guy in baggy jeans and a clean white T-shirt.

“Tell us what you told them,” Monroe said to the fat guy. Tall, his hair cropped around a receding line, and with the shoulders of a long-ago college boxer, people tended to speak up when Monroe asked a question.

“I don’t know anything,” the guy whined, for nothing like the first time. “Just what the chick in 12 told me when she checked out. Said there’d been noise from next door, this was a couple days ago. I only mentioned it to the
officer because they said the guy who shot the cop had short hair and glasses and I thought, you know, that’s kind of what the guy in room 11 looked like, in fact.”

Nina nodded. Her eyes were on a magazine half-hidden under the counter. The manager saw her looking, and seemed to find it kind of a thrill. “I just adore that stuff,” she said, looking back up at him. “Makes me want to fuck every guy on the planet. You want to get it on right here, right now?”

The guy looked away. “As I thought,” Nina said. “So meantime give us the keys to rooms 10, 11, 12.”

Monroe took the keys and pointed at three of the cops. They followed the agents as they left the office and turned into the courtyard. Room 11 was four doors down on the right-hand side. The drapes were still drawn. Two of the policemen were given the keys to the doors on either side.

They drew their weapons, opened the doors quietly. Pulled them wide and then slipped inside the rooms.

A minute later both came out. One shook his head. The other said, “I could hear something. Could be someone talking.”

“Three areas,” the other cop observed, quietly. “Sitting room, bedroom in back, bathroom.”

“Okay,” Monroe said. For just a second Nina thought she saw him thinking about handing the remaining key to one of the cops, then realizing how it would look. That kind of thing—plus just turning away from people as if they didn’t matter, the way he had done when she’d arrived—was precisely why the street cops didn’t love them like brothers. She got her own gun out, holding it with both hands and clear of her body. She was careful not to let anyone see a small wince. Three months now, and her right arm still gave her trouble. Two doctors and three physiotherapists had told her there was nothing wrong with it anymore. Nina thought maybe it was the small round scar on the upper right side of her chest talking, saying it knew all about guns now and wanted nothing to do with them. Tough, in that case. FBI agents are constrained to have
their weapon with them at all times. Personally, she slept with hers under the bed.

Monroe squared up to the door, Nina just behind. He told the cops to be ready to follow, but to give them time. They nodded. They looked more up for this than she felt, but that was part of being a guy, she knew. Any one of them looked weak in front of a colleague, no one would want them at their back again.

Monroe slipped the key in the lock. Turned it. Waited a second, then pushed it. The door opened to a dark room. The drapes on the other side were drawn too. It was warm.

“This is the FBI,” Monroe said. His voice was steady. “Put down any weapons and come out with your hands up. This will be your only warning.”

They waited. No one said anything. No one appeared. The old conundrum, polarizing options for the near future: either there was no one in the room and everything was cool and after-the-fact, or there was a very bad man inside and he had in mind shooting him some cop.

Nina was in position. She stepped into the room.

Leathery dark. Heavy air. Really, really warm, like someone had turned off the air conditioner twenty-four hours before. Room a square, holding battered sofa, two chairs, desk, big old prehistoric television. No personal effects evident. Flicker-light from doorway in corner on courtyard side. Door partially ajar.

Also a low sound. Very likely television.

Who’s watching it?

Nina sidestepped across into the body of the room, making space for Monroe. He came in silently, hand held back to signal the cops to stay where they were. Once he was positioned on the door to the other room she turned, moved silently to the closet. Held her gun short arm while she eased it open.

Empty but for the smell of dust. Left it open. Turned on her right foot to face back to the room, nodded to Monroe. The cops at the doorway stood quiet and ready. Monroe moved toward the door to the second room. Nina came up, a yard and a half behind. Stopped.

Everything flattens out into
now: