Two things registered as I stepped into the kitchen. One, I identified the sound not as the flump of laundry going around in the dryer but of my back door’s weather seal locking into place. And two, someone was sitting in a chair at the table.
Their shadowed face turned slowly toward me, and there was the click of a hammer cocking.
“Have a seat, Andy.”
15
One Sunday when I was in fourth grade, Mom brought us all to church. It was like every other Sunday since she always brought us to church, but this particular time I decided to bring my Game Boy too.
Surreptitious. That’s the word I would use now about how I thought I was being then. I sat to the far end of the pew, as far away from Mom as I could get, with Em and Kel in between me and Cory, since I knew he would squeal. I took out the Bible from the holder at the back of the pew in front of me, positioned it just so in my lap, and began to play my game.
It was perfect. The console was small enough to basically hide in my hands anyway, and with the Bible and the speaker system booming with the father’s voice, I had all the cover I needed.
Until Mrs. Tross in the pew across the aisle spotted what I was doing. She didn’t have her binoculars with her then, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. She spoke to my mother after Mass, and I was summarily searched on the walk home, my contraband discovered.
One day, Mom said, in a measured tone that was more terrifying than if she’d been yelling, one day you’ll stand before the Almighty at the edge of your death, and what will you say when he asks if you’ve been attentive to his word? What will you do when you’re at the end of this life and the beginning of the next?
I knew the answer now, standing in the dark of my kitchen with an unknown man holding a gun on me.
I sat.
Closer, the gun was visible, some streetlight shine collecting on its barrel. I couldn’t see the bore diameter but wondered if it really mattered how big the bullet would be that ended your life. The guy wore a dark coat of some kind and kept his hair short, the color indistinguishable. His eyes glinted just enough to make them look like they were lit from within.
We didn’t say anything for a time, only sitting, contemplating one another. I wasn’t sure how well he could see me, but I felt like I was on a dissection tray, slowly being taken apart.
“I’m a fan of your work,” he finally said.
It was like he’d spoken in a foreign language. “My . . . what?”
“Your books. Are you not the Andy Drake who wrote the Laird Holmes series?”
“Yeah, I . . . I am.” How ironic to not even be a bestselling author and be killed by a lunatic fan. Stephen King, eat your heart out.
“Good books. Read all of them. You got a knack for character. Especially the mob guys. They say art imitates life, and I’d say yours does.”
“I’m sorry, can I ask what this is about?” My voice had quit shaking, but my hands hadn’t, so when he slid something across the table, I didn’t reach out to pick it up. I didn’t need to. I knew what it was.
My note to Seth Goddard. The note I’d stuck in the doorjamb of the Sandford Review. Back on my table. Abracadabra.
The guy tapped it once with a gloved fingertip. “This, however,” he said, before pulling the note back out of sight, “is not your best writing.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was the man who had chased me from Rachel’s, who had pursued me through the woods. Somehow he must’ve figured out who I was.
“Are Rachel and the boys okay?” I asked when he offered nothing more.
He made a quiet scoffing sound. “See, I always thought writers were smart people. Worldly. Able to reason. But you, you, my friend, seem dumb as a bag of hammers.”
“I just assumed since you brought the note back, you work for HerringBone.”
“I do.”
My mouth moved for a second before any sound came out. “So . . . I thought Ryan Vallance and David Barren owed money to HerringBone. To Mr. Hope.”
There was a pause; then the guy burst out laughing. He had a good laugh, a deep chuckle that would make you look around if you heard it in a crowded bar. When he quieted, he said, “Mr. Hope—that’s good. Yeah, Speranza isn’t anyone’s name, but I’m guessing you figured that much out on your own. As for Mr. Vallance, yes, he owed a considerable amount of money, and subsequently, so did Mr. Barren.”
I watched him. Waited for the muzzle flash. This was all some kind of game ending in me bleeding out on the floor with my guts strung through the back of the chair I was sitting on. “I don’t get it,” I said when he didn’t shoot.