The Middleman_A Novel Read online

  “Which left-wing radicals?”

  “Named after…” He started snapping his fingers.

  Amy tried to help out. “You know. That old German Communist lady.”

  David turned sharply to eyeball them. “The Kommando Rosa Luxemburg?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Jesus,” said David. “Those are the idiots who blew themselves up. Took out the entire group. Nearly killed me.”

  “Really?” asked Amy, suddenly interested.

  David felt ill, remembering. “They were planning to blow up the Hauptbahnhof—the main train station.” He took a swig of beer; his expression darkened. “He’s here to proselytize.”

  “You think Bishop’s recruiting?” asked Amy.

  “A guy like him is always recruiting,” Nasser said.

  “Recruiting Ingrid,” David muttered, his voice harder now.

  “Fact is,” Bill said, wanting to calm his friend, “Martin Bishop is a talker. You think he’s ever going to pick up a gun? He’s in it for the easy access to coed sex. He’s in it for the attention. He’s just—”

  “Look,” David cut in, and all three followed his hard stare across the lawn to where Martin Bishop had paused at the top of the porch steps. He was smiling, gazing at the kids, a beer in his hand. He looked, to Bill and Amy and Nasser, at peace. David saw something else entirely. He set his beer down in the grass, straightened, and walked toward the porch.

  Bill said, “Hey. Really. Don’t bother.”

  But David wasn’t listening to anyone anymore.

  5

  KEVIN AND George watched families, the wired and tired citizens of suburban California, arriving at and leaving Red Robin. Kevin was thinking how their lives were so completely different than his. George, he suspected, was thinking of how their cushy lives would end, and soon.

  “How many have you picked up?” Kevin asked.

  “Eh?”

  “People like me. Deserters.”

  George grinned. “Deserters. I like that.”

  “So?”

  “So I took three deserters somewhere this morning, crack of dawn. When I called you I’d just gotten back.”

  “We’re going to the same place?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where?”

  George’s smile slipped away, and for the first time Kevin felt a twinge of worry. “You’ll find out. All right?”

  “A man just likes to know.”

  In answer, George turned on the radio, releasing a blast of fuzzy speed metal, then scanned until he reached 90.9, the local NPR station. Florida representative Diane Trumble had announced five subpoenas in the Plains Capital–IfW investigation, dragnetting two CEOs, a chief operating officer, and two general managers. “Hearings are being set up for after the August recess, and Representative Hanes and I look forward to having our questions answered fully and honestly.”

  “Preach it, sister,” George said; then both men listened as a newscaster told them of an unverified report from Nigeria, that a girls’ school had been attacked by Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group that had, only three years ago, kidnapped nearly three hundred girls from another school in Chibok.

  “There she is,” George said, switching off the radio and nodding at a blond woman—twenty-five, maybe, with a fat purse on her shoulder—leaving the restaurant. Jeans, a black polo, and a short black waitress’s apron. A Red Robin name tag identified her in big letters as TRACEY. George got out to meet her, and Kevin watched through the windshield. She was distraught, her hands fluttering. When George whispered to her, she nodded, then shook her head vigorously and raised her voice. “I’m not going back in there!”

  George put a hand on her shoulder; she flinched, so he removed it. After he’d said a few more words, she nodded again and opened her bag. From it she removed her phone and wallet and held them out to him. He shook his head—he didn’t want to touch them. Instead, he pointed. She was going to have to do this herself. Dejected, she crossed the parking lot, back toward Red Robin, and dumped them in an outside trashcan as a sated trucker left the restaurant, picking at his mouth with a toothpick and staring at her.

  George looked back through the windshield at Kevin and winked.

  Tracey turned to leave, then hesitated and took off her name tag and apron and threw them away as well. George folded his seat forward so she could get in the back. She tossed her heavy purse in before her, then as she climbed in glanced at Kevin and said, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he answered. When she settled back into her seat, he read the words embroidered on the shoulder of her black shirt:

  HONOR

  INTEGRITY

  SEEKING KNOWLEDGE

  HAVING FUN

  As George got in behind the wheel, she said, “Give a lady some warning next time, okay?”

  “Gotta be this way,” he answered as he started the car. “Them’s the rules.”

  She sighed loudly and looked out the side window.

  Voice bright with enthusiasm, George said, “We ready?”

  “Been for fucking ever,” Tracey said.

  6

  “HEY, YOU!” David called, approaching the porch.

  Martin Bishop had a smile for David. A lovely, open smile of welcome. “Ingrid told me about your books, man. Looking forward to reading them.”

  “Tell me about the Kommando Rosa Luxemburg.”

  Bishop’s serene face broke a little, which felt like a victory to David, so he kept pushing.

  “If you’re so goddam peaceful, Martin, then why were you hanging out with terrorists in Berlin?”

  Bishop glanced off to the side, sniffed, and said, “They weren’t terrorists.”

  “The German government disagrees with you. So does our government. Even the UN put them on a list. Ingrid and I were living there when their bomb exploded. I was standing across the fucking street. So don’t tell us they weren’t terrorists.” He turned to Ingrid for backup, but she wasn’t looking at him. She, like Bishop, was staring into the middle distance.

  “Then you must be right,” Bishop said quietly, his voice strained. “If everyone says it’s true then it must be true.”

  David came another step closer. “You’ve got a great scam, Martin. I’ll give you that. But, really. Everyone’s dissatisfied with their lives. It’s called the human condition. You tell them it’s not their fault. Blame the government. Blame big business. Find a gun and start a revolution! Instead of snake oil, you’re selling slogans. What’s going to happen when one of your followers actually does what you say? You already caused a riot in St. Louis, but what happens when some philosophy major shoots a dean, or a cop? You know they’re coming for you, right? The First Amendment won’t save you. Not anymore.”

  Bishop’s eyes wandered, but he was paying attention. Everyone was. David hadn’t bothered to keep his voice down, and behind him the other guests were gathering to witness whatever was going to happen, as if this were another of Bill’s surprise party events, like the piñata.

  Bishop said, “Sounds like you’ve got more faith than I do.”

  “What?”

  “Faith,” Bishop repeated, then shook his head. “Look, I talk to people all the time. Crowds. They applaud. Occasionally they even cheer. I’m pleased to see them filled with the revolutionary spirit. But listen, man, because this is truth: They’re not ready. They look at me, they see what you see: a guy who talks a good game. What I inspire in them is not revolution but the desire to go out and talk to their friends about revolution. They’re not going to step up and take action.”

  “You don’t know this.”

  “I’m pretty sure about it. All I can really do is make a point, and I want the people in power to hear it, too: Armed rebellion is always an option.”

  “So you just talk.”

  “You have a better idea? I’m all ears.”

  David took the five steps up the porch until he was standing right in front of Bishop, who was about three inches shorter. “Sure,
I have one.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Stay the fuck away from my wife.”

  There was, of course, a pregnant pause. It wasn’t David’s words but the way he delivered them—hammering a strong, self-righteous index finger into his target’s chest. Physical aggression from David was a rare thing, but it was almost always preceded by a lot of alcohol.

  “Your wife?” Bishop asked without much emotion. “Like, your dog? Your phone?”

  “You’re a manipulator,” David said. “You’re not dragging her into your fucked-up—”

  Two things kept David from finishing his sentence. First, he didn’t know how to finish it; second, his words were just to distract Bishop from the fist he was throwing.

  David had been drinking, though, and the punch was slow. Bill saw the hand rise and the fingers curl. Everyone else probably did, too. But Bishop had either been drinking a lot also, or he didn’t care. He took David’s fist on the side of his jaw, stumbled backward, arms flailing, plastic cup flying off into the grass. He balanced on one foot for half a second then collapsed back onto the porch.

  In that same instant, a large man in jeans and a leather biker’s jacket bolted up the steps, grabbed David by the collar of his shirt, and tossed him without effort down the steps before squatting to help Bishop to his feet.

  Bill rushed over to check on David, who was grunting and holding his ribs. “You okay?”

  “Get off me,” David said, pushing Bill away, and sat up. He watched Bishop being helped to his feet, but not only by the big guy in the biker’s jacket. He was also being helped by a scarlet-cheeked Ingrid, who acted as if her husband weren’t even there.

  The whole party, it seemed, had gathered in the backyard to watch, and their faces were a mix of confusion and revulsion, a few struck by the dumb glee of blood sport.

  “I’ll let you have that one,” Bishop said to David, standing between Ingrid and the large, blue-eyed man with the five-day beard. “Just get hip before our next conversation.”

  “Come,” Bill told David.

  “What did he say?” David muttered, then climbed to his feet and raised his voice. “Ingrid, I think it’s time we went home.”

  She didn’t answer. She remained at Bishop’s side.

  Bill said to David, “Now. Let’s go.”

  David was confused; it was evident from his face and the way his hands hung like useless, twitching stumps at his sides. He didn’t even have words.

  Ingrid finally looked at her husband and, with a voice so cold and hard that David didn’t even recognize it, said, “Go ahead, David. Just go home.”

  “Come on,” Bill said, pulling, but David shook him off and marched away, around the side of the house. He wanted to be alone.

  7

  THEY RETURNED to I-80, and as they progressed Kevin watched the unraveling of civilization. After Rocklin the landscape flattened, speckled with burned yellow grass and low trees. Then the land buckled and rose and the trees grew tall and lush as they entered Tahoe National Forest. Then this, too, fell away as they reached civilization’s last big holdout—Reno. That metropolis grew out of the desert and then succumbed to shrubbery and low hills. Eventually, they got off of 80, taking the two-lane US 50 south, to where humans had given up trying to control the land at all.

  They had been driving for more than three hours. After some initial outbursts, Tracey had fallen silent. She was, she admitted, wound up. She’d nearly clawed out the eyes of her manager before leaving the restaurant. “A pig,” she told them. “A fucking cretin. Darlin’ this, and sweetheart that, while he’s rubbing up against my ass in the break room. But if I’d blinded him I never would’ve gotten out of there.”

  “You kept your head,” George said approvingly. “That’s a valuable skill.”

  “But I’ll be back,” Tracey muttered. “Frank Ramsey will find out what happens when you fuck with an angry woman.”

  George winked at Kevin. “See? An army of special interests.”

  By the time they reached the desert, conversation had ceased completely. Tracey dozed in the back, and Kevin thought about the next steps. All he had been told was that he should shed the detritus of his old life and allow this rangy man and his GTO to deliver him safely to the Promised Land. The level of trust involved was enormous, and while he submitted to it he did so with trepidation. It wasn’t just trepidation; it was also that feeling he’d had back in San Francisco: abandon. Even with the fear constricting his blood vessels, the abandon felt like an intoxicant.

  They were literally in the middle of nowhere—hadn’t seen another car for five miles, and that had been a shoddy pickup heading back toward Reno—when George slowed and came to a stop. He looked into the rearview, where the low sun, in its last gasp, was blinding.

  “What’s up?” asked Kevin. Tracey was still asleep.

  “I’ll tell you when I see it,” George said, eyes still on the mirror. “Open the glove box, will you?”

  Kevin did so. It was stuffed with papers and CDs and, in the back, a leather bag.

  “Pass me that,” said George.

  He didn’t need to open the bag to know there was a pistol inside, and as he passed it over he had a nasty thought: This was the end for him. He’d said something wrong, or some hacker in the employ of Bishop had uncovered something questionable about his past. He—and, possibly, Tracey—had been brought into the desert to be executed.

  But George only took out the pistol—a Remington 1911—and laid it on his knee, eyes still glued to the rearview.

  “Maybe you should tell me,” Kevin suggested.

  George ran his tongue over his incisors. “Saw him about twenty miles back. Ford Focus. Thing is, I saw him back at the Red Robin, too.”

  “Same plates?”

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe he’s one of ours.”

  George rocked his head. “We’re all going different places. Here.” He reached under the steering wheel and popped the hood. “Open it up, will you?”

  Kevin hesitated. “You see him?”

  “Not yet. Just go open the hood and play mechanic.”

  As he got out, Tracey stirred but didn’t wake. George watched the mirror. When Kevin propped open the hood, he was struck by the wave of hot fumes from the engine. What was the story, really? Maybe George just wanted him outside, so the gunshot wouldn’t dirty up his car. Or maybe …

  There. He saw it: a glimmer of sun reflecting off the hood of a car a half mile back. George opened his door and climbed out, hooking the pistol into his belt at the base of his back. “Yep,” he said after a moment. “That’s him.”

  The dusty red Focus slowed when George stood in its path, his hands raised, half pleading, half surrendering. As George walked over to the driver’s side window, smiling, Kevin stepped out from behind the hood and leaned until he could see past the glare of the sun—the driver was a woman.

  “Excuse me,” he heard George say to her. “We’ve got car trouble.”

  Unsure, the woman rolled her window down a few inches and said something. A question, it sounded like.

  “Yeah,” George answered. “Have you tried the reception out here? Look, if you could just call Triple-A once you get some bars, that would be great.”

  That was when Kevin understood. He should have understood earlier, but the heat, or the disorientation of movement, or any of a hundred other stresses on his body, had rendered him momentarily stupid.

  Staring hard at the woman’s windshield, he used a flat hand to draw a line across his own throat. He did it twice, three times. But he couldn’t see a thing from the glare. He had no idea if she was even looking in his direction.

  The door to the GTO opened, and Tracey climbed out, blinking in the bright light. “What’s up?”

  George reached behind himself, took out the Remington, and shot three times quickly through the gap in the woman’s window. Crack, crack, crack. Kevin saw dark splatters on the windshield.

  Tracey screamed. Kevin
started to approach, his knees spongy, but George was already hurrying back to them, the gun hanging at his side. “Time to go, kids!”

  “What … what?” said Tracey.

  George said, “Let’s get moving, right? We’ve got a long road ahead of us.”

  8

  FOR ABOUT an hour Bill didn’t see David or Martin Bishop or the gorilla who had tossed David off the porch. Instead, he joined half a dozen conversations, moving along whenever he started to tire. Extricating himself from conversations was a skill that had been invaluable to his career, and to parties like this. He quizzed a pair of actors who’d recently fled Miami and took note of their complaints. Gina’s cousins had moved to Fort Lauderdale a couple of years before and were filling her head with dreams of white beaches and an absence of snowplows. White beaches full of white retirees drinking piña coladas served by brown waiters.

  By the time he spotted Ingrid on the boulder by the miniplayground, he’d decided to have it out with Gina once everyone left. He wasn’t a young man anymore, but damned if he was going to cut himself off from his people to rot in the Land of Self-Obsessed Retirees.

  He brought his vodka tonic over to Ingrid, who stared at the fifteen or so kids, ranging in age from an oddly independent two-year-old girl, looking wild and dirty in only a diaper, to a twelve-year-old boy with an iPad, ignoring the smaller kids who crowded around him. Ingrid showed off a tense smile as he settled next to her on the boulder. “Thanks for dealing with David earlier,” she said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Inside, glowering. Martin’s gone, but he won’t let it go. He’s talking to Gina about politics. As if he knows anything about politics.”

  “He’s just worried, you know. About you.”

  “He’s right to be worried, but not because of Martin Bishop.”

  Bill let his expression ask the question.

  “Do you know what it’s like to live with a failure?”

  “You’re talking about David?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I don’t care if he’s a success or not. If he loves his work, that’s enough for me. But he doesn’t. He’s never loved writing. He’s in love with the idea of being a novelist. Of being seen as a novelist. That’s why he’s falling apart now. His publisher turned down that last book because it was bad. He’s only writing now because we need the money. Not because he has anything to say.”