A PAY PHONE AT A VALERO SERVICE STATION.
Out of breath.
Tuneless keytones. 411: government listings: U.S. Marshals office: Los Angeles: main switchboard: the helpful operator: Jay impatient, says hi, needs to talk to Deputy U.S. Marshal Public. First name John. Yes, John Q. Public, Jay says, voice thin, hoarse, words coming in breathless bursts, please don’t hang up, he knows what it sounds like, it’s the name he was given, the name of the agent, or connect him with Jane Doe. Stupid, yes, but—who’s calling? Jay tells them. Johnson. Jay. He tells the operator at the U.S. Marshals office that he’s a protected witness, he’s in the program, and she hangs up.
The receiver drops from his grasp, dangles on its metal leash. Hands on his knees, coughing, bent double, he closes his eyes. His heart pounds in his ears. He tries to fill his lungs with air.
After he watched Vaughn stolen away, he sprinted back through the diner, into the kitchen, past blank stares of startled fry cooks to the rear exit and burst out into the alley and ran pointlessly after the Mercedes just merging into traffic, as if by will alone he could catch it, down the long, shadowed alley, his legs hitting the pavement so hard he began stumbling forward into heavy traffic on the next city street, cars swerving, honking, as Jay, sidestepping a slow-moving gridlock caused by roadwork at the next intersection, looking for the sliver of dark gray maybe, possibly, just disappearing around the corner—feet pounding, running, running, as if all the running he did on Catalina was training for this one feat—saving Vaughn—which he knew was impossible, knows is impossible, you can save only yourself and, sometimes, even if you do, what’s the point?—although this time he’s not running away—running, stumbling reckless forward desperate around another corner where finally he saw the charcoal S-Class picking up speed (was that it?) three blocks ahead of him (was it the same car?) and make a merging swerve onto a main thoroughfare, disappearing, Glendale Avenue or San Fernando Road, Jay didn’t know, he was all turned around.
But there was this gas station across the street.
Receiver in hand. Dial tone. Tuneless keytones, he tries it all again.
Same result. Institutional politeness followed by exasperated skepticism, impatience, threats of legal consequences for tying up a federal phone line, for making a nuisance, and Jay says fine, fine, send somebody to get me.
And she hangs up on him.
Dial tone tuneless keytones; this time he taps out 9-1-1.
Johnson, he tells the operator. J as in . . . Johnson.
Yes, it’s an emergency, Jay says, he’s a Federal witness, he’s left protected custody, he’s exposed, vulnerable, he’s out, he’s whatayacallit—compromised—and the emergency operator asks him to repeat his name and he does. Johnson, J. B. Jay. Johnson.
A soft voice behind him suggests trying “Jimmy Warren.”
Jay spins.
Jane Doe is standing outside the pay phone kiosk, at a respectful distance, not too close, casual; he forgot how tall and striking she is. A navy blue Prius with government plates has stolen up, silent except for the faint bite of gravel under the tires, with waiting doors open, beneath the service station awning.
Tripod is behind the wheel. He grins out at Jay mirthlessly. Lifeless eyes lumped in his face like two rubber stoppers, opaque.
Doe asks, all droll and friendly: “Where you been, James?”
• • •
I saw him,” Jay insists, although, as he says it, he’s aware that he’s not completely confident he’s right.
Through some ugly ramble of lower Glendale the government plug-in hybrid floats silky, tinted windows set at half-mast. A smog-mantled cityscape roiling and wheezing past like rear projection, the Library Tower and a posse of flattop skyscrapers loom over the palm-stuck hills of Angelino Heights. Jay’s thoughts scatter, regroup, flailing for coherence. Piecing together a story he doesn’t even know the plot of.
“Dunn?” Doe, in the front seat, with her head barely turned. Tripod driving, unusually silent.
“The pilot, yeah. My ride. After the plane crashed and burned . . . I didn’t see him get out, but—” Still laboring to get his breath, though now he’s not winded. It’s more like there’s simply not enough air. Anywhere.
The back of Doe’s head angles, wordless, pensive.
“If he got out,” Jay says, words knotting up on him. “What, or why, is he . . . ?” Then, frowning at an old thought he needs confirmed and changing subjects: “You let me go.” It’s a question made statement; Doe is unresponsive and won’t confirm or deny. “Was he—” But Jay’s not sure what to ask next. “Dunn. I mean—was that why—do you guys know who he is—was—or if he’s part of—?”
“We don’t know him,” Jane Doe cuts in, even-tempered. “The Cessna he crashed belongs to one of those well-connected private paramilitary government contracting outfits that sprung up in the fertile fields of 9/11, like genetically altered weeds, and now you can’t get rid of them.”
“Why would they—he, Dunn—or anyone—want Vaughn, when it’s me, or at least according to you, I mean . . . isn’t it—?”
“Take a breath,” Doe says. “You saw something, Jay. This morning. Yesterday. Something you’re not sure of,” gently, almost solicitous, “if you think about it.”
Jay hesitates, knows she’s right. “Lately,” he confesses, “since I left, since before I left, okay sure: I’m finding it’s like, yeah . . . I’m just not so sure of things. Anymore. Which is not to say fucking blind,” Jay adds, defensive. “And, yeah, it worries me, because we, I, all of us. We’re so easily erased. And you guys—”
“Where does your friend live?” Tripod asks.
“Vaughn’s not part of this.”
“He is now.”
“What do they want? The list? Is this all about the goddamn list? Oh, and Vaughn thinks I was in a psych ward, so does Stacy, thank you very much—”
“Calm down.”
“—You told everybody I went crazy? What the fuck is that? I mean. Fuck. It’s just, everything, is completely—”
“Jay?”
“—just completely—”
She turns to face him around the headrest. “Jay . . . step by step. Where does Vaughn—”
“—and then he was right there,” Jay says, still agitated.
“Calm down.”
“Right there. In the window. Outside the diner. Like a ghost.”
“Jay.”
Doe’s arm swipes over the seat and the back of her hand delivers a moment of fireworks and darkness. “I said—”
Jay’s head snaps into the seat, he slumps back, hands going up, bleeding from the nose. “OwJesus.”
“—Doucement,” Doe declaims softly. “We know where he lives, we were just being conversational.”
“What?”
“Doucement,” Doe says.
Tripod: “It’s French for shut the fuck up.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jay, glaring, is adrift, a flare of rage only serving to choke him wordless. Wet red threads leaking out of his nose, monsterlike; he can see them in Tripod’s rearview mirror.
“You need to get ahold of your emotions,” Doe tells him. She hands him a tissue and looks at her hand. Her knuckles are red. She flexes her fingers and frowns, as if disappointed in herself.
The tinted windows hum upward.
• • •
They veer north on the Hollywood Freeway, the dour silence of the preternaturally mute hybrid car broken by the thump of the concrete seams, low-fluttering: fffmmmphhh fffmmmphhh fffmmmphhh fffmmmphhh.
“This is not a maze,” Jay says finally. His face aches, and his nose is numb. Thoughts untwisting: “This particular zigzag gang of angles. This . . . thing you’ve made for me. Has no outlet. At all. Which means it’s not even, at the heart of it, a riddle to solve. Is it?”
Doe and Tripod have no reaction.
“A true riddle, or test, has something akin to a door,” Jay says. “This, instead. It’s like, what, I don’t know . . . a zero-sum game. Or a watery grave. Without any hope of exit, unless, well, unless there’s a looking glass up ahead.”
He watches traffic fall away on either side of them and wonders if Feds can drive as fast as they want. “Is there? I mean. Is there a looking glass?”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Doe says at length.
“A way to just opt out of this whole thing,” Jay explains.
Tripod makes a low guttural noise that is either mockery or disgust.
Jay closes his eyes. “And I wish I could say there was some . . . satisfaction in seeing . . . feeling all this, but there’s not, but . . .” His thread unravels. He’s beaten. He’s got no fight left. He knows it. “You thought I’d lead you somewhere.” Nothing from Doe. He no longer cares to know what they want. “Or you’d see where Dunn would take me.” Tripod’s head moves slightly, as if he’s looking for some signal from Doe. And what Jay wants?
Doe’s eyes stay aimed straight ahead, “Whatever you say, Jay. Have a party.”
Jay lays the side of his head she hit against the window and feels the heat on his skin. “Okay.” It does not escape his notice that she’s called him Jay.
The Prius slips down an off-ramp, decelerating, and outside Jay sees streamers: plastic triangle flaglets of red white blue flap and rattle like little tropical fish sucking air, as, underneath them: the federal car fragments through the intersection, leaving rubber as it arcs around the used-car lot and merges with local traffic.
• • •
Vaughn?”
It’s the white door at the very end of the corridor, 440E, and the E is missing; fourth floor of a Deco Irving Gill knockoff residential apartment building just off Las Palmas. Jay pounds with the heel of his hand.
“Vaughnie? You home?”
No answer. An uneasy deadness in the stale air. He looks at Doe, and Tripod. “If they took him,” Jay says. “Why would he be here?”
“If they took him.” Tripod puts a fat hand on him and draws him aside to let Jane Doe expertly kick the door inward without splintering the jam.
It doesn’t smell right. There’s lots of Vaughn in the place, but also something else. Not Vaughn.
Doe has her gun out, but at her side; she leads them through the quaint, pointless quasi-foyer with the small, round antique table Vaughn got from his grandmother and a fishbowl of tetras suspended in still water like a handful of small promises. Vaughn’s bachelor apartment is usually tidy, bright, sunny, with a postcard view of the Hollywood sign. But right now everything’s been tossed like a salad and the Venetian blinds are rent and splayed and the mermaid Jay pulled warm and vibrant from a strip-club sea just last night dangles dead as anything in the middle of the main room, hung from blue-black duct-taped hands on a ceiling fan slowly turning with an angry hum.
Somebody has shot her in the head.
Even Doe is caught by surprise, and she exhales a soft, sad lament.
Jay turns away, light-headed. He twists and buckles to his knees. His forehead touches to the floor like a penitent praying, and Tripod arcs around him, no big deal, as if to suggest this sort of thing happens in his, their, world every day (which it couldn’t) and in so doing establish his, their, professional distance from it (which he can’t), cracking wise: “Well, now, okay, maybe he’ll believe us. Maybe he’ll finally understand the serious, serious shit he’s all up in.” But Doe just touches the mermaid lightly, tenderly, sorrowfully, and the body sways. “Oh, girl,” she says to it softly. “I’m sorry.” Then, to Jay, absent of judgment, asks, “Do you know her?”
There’s no response from Jay, who has further upset himself with his unchecked, spontaneous, and callous relief that it isn’t Vaughn hanging from the fan.
Fuck. Fucking coldhearted shit.
“Jay?” Tripod, impatient. He’s pulled latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. Does he always carry them?
Shit. Shit.
Did he know her?
Doe looks absently to the doorway, still gaping, but she’s talking to Tripod. “Call it in, Miles. Don’t touch anything. We’re not staying.”
Did he, does Jay, know anything?
Finally, Jay finds his voice: “Yes,” he answers. “Yes.” And then, truthfully: “No.”