“Paraphrase,” said his sister.
By the single light atop the twelve-foot post to his left, he could see the lean, slump-shouldered figure, eyes slightly open, hair pounded forward and dripping.
Victor Lee was speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Lee looked up at Lew’s window and their eyes met. Lee’s lips moved. Whatever he was saying, he had to know that Lew couldn’t hear it. Lewis let the slat drop.
“Lewis?” said Angie. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Wherever you are, you should be somewhere else.”
“I know.”
11
The next morning about an hour before Herman came to work, Uncle Tonio got to fire his carbine for the first time since Korea. He had always thought, and often said, the compact, light rifle was the best weapon ever invented. As a sergeant in the Signal Corps responsible for storing electronic equipment, primarily phones, Tonio had carried a carbine. It didn’t shoot as far or quite as straight as an M1, but it wasn’t a weight on his back, a constant reminder of where he was and what he was doing.
Tonio had started checking the doors and the windows, as he always did, when he heard the sound in the darkness. He could tell where it was coming from. He knew the echoes and scurries of mice, cats and rats, the creaking of boxes and furniture, the groaning of the floor and walls when weather changed.
Tonio went back to his office, opened his closet, reached behind his clothes, pulled the carbine out of its leather carrier, loaded it and walked back out into the warehouse.
The sound was definitely coming from one of three mesh-enclosed storage rooms. One of the three was the one in which Lewis and Catherine’s furniture, papers, all the remnants of their lives, were stored and protected.
They were back, he decided, as he walked in the shadows outside the reach of the dim overhead nightlights.
Tonio had shot two soldiers in Korea, one Chinese, the other North Korean. They, in turn, had shot him in the thigh. Still hurt. Once, years ago, he wondered if the two men he had shot had lived, were still alive, what it would be like to get together, try to talk about memories that didn’t exist in words. Show them, give them his Purple Heart. Maybe they would give him their equivalent of the Purple Heart, if they had one.
No doubt now. He heard it. Tonio was angry. He kicked off his shoes gently, turned the corner to his left and, carbine at the ready, looked down the aisle. The overhead lamp in the storage room had not been turned on. The wavering beam of a flashlight clicked off. Silence.
Tonio moved forward, carbine raised.
“Come out,” he called. “Come out you son of a bitch or I shoot.”
But Tonio knew he wouldn’t shoot at the room, wouldn’t risk destroying his nephew’s memories of his wife.
There was a shuffling in the darkness. No sound of the door being opened. Was it already open? Had the burglar left it open? Was he, she, they, now in stockinged feet like Tonio, padding toward a door or worse, was he-
The sound was behind him now. Tonio turned, weapon up as he heard the cocking of a gun. Then the sound was gone. Tonio had a choice: fear or anger. He chose a combination of the two, or, rather, they chose him.
It took four or five seconds and then Tonio was after the intruder. Tonio limped. The intruder ran.
Tonio turned down the aisle toward his office. The door to the dock was open. Morning sunlight silhouetted a man’s figure. The man was holding something in his right hand.
Tonio, panting heavily, put the rifle to his cheek and tried to aim, fired. Suddenly, a second figure dashed out of the warehouse darkness, pushed past the man in the doorway and turned left.
“Herman?” Tonio called, moving toward the open door.
“Who was that?” asked Herman.
Tonio moved past him and went out on the dock. There was no one in sight. Herman joined him and looked around. The question came simply, logically. The man in the dark had crept behind him. The man was armed. Tonio had a rifle.
“Why didn’t he shoot me?”
“Don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“Man, lot younger than you and me, lot older than a college kid,” said Herman. “White. Can’t say more. You’d best sit down.”
Tonio put his arm on Herman’s shoulder and the two went into the office and sat. Tonio propped his rifle against the wall, within reach.
“Want to give me the rifle and I’ll go after him?” asked Herman, who had been a sniper in both Korea and Vietnam.
“No,” said Tonio.
“Suit yourself,” said Herman, unzipping his jacket. “This is for you.”
He handed Tonio a blue plastic bowl.
“Cake. Celia made it last night. Plastic spoon’s inside the bowl there. We ran out of forks.”
Tonio had caught his breath.
“Thanks,” he said.
“My birthday,” said Herman. “Yesterday.”
“Happy birthday,” said Tonio.
“We get some people for guard duty tonight?” asked Herman.
“Special people,” said Tonio.
The rain had stopped, but the sky was Chicago gray, and thunder rumbled and rippled off of Lake Michigan, drowning out the sound of traffic.
It was morning. Early. Ken Sing, whose real name was Kudlup Singh Parajer, and Debest Williams, whose real name was Debest Williams, were walking their usual route from the one-bedroom apartment they shared to the University of Illinois campus where they were graduate students and assistants in the chemistry department.
The subject was Jochim Bachem, the professor for whom they worked, the professor Ken nearly worshiped and Debest thought was a sham.
“Oh, come on, Kude,” Debest said. “How many times I have to tell you to watch him. Nods his head, chews on that damn stained yellow stem pipe, acts like he’s thinking. Then what does he say when someone, anyone, you, me, asks him a question?”
“Sometimes he says, ‘What do you think?’”
They were walking past a few half asleep children shuffling in the opposite direction toward the Catholic grade school.
“He always says that,” said Debest. “Maybe he had answers once, but not now.”
Debest slammed his palm down on the car they were passing. Something inside the car moved. The horn went off. Ken and Debest stopped and looked back.
The head propped over the steering was deep red with blood. Debest and Ken tried to open the car doors. The horn kept wailing. Doors opened in the homes across the street. People stepped out.
Ken looked around and called, “Call 911.”
A bulky man in jeans and a black sweatshirt moved across the street to the car. He touched Debest’s shoulder to move him out of the way, took a knife from his pocket, pushed the window in far enough to insert the knife against it and down the glass, pushed down on the door handle. The door popped open. The dead man slumped off the steering wheel and the noise stopped.
A small group of kids and residents, all wide-awake now, stood on the sidewalk.
“We’re going to have to stay,” said Ken.
“Yeah, but that asshole Bachem won’t believe our reason.”
Franco closed the knife, put it back in his pocket and waited for the police to arrive.
“I have three jokes.”
It was the first thing Ann Horowitz heard when she picked up the phone in the morning after two rings. She had her first client in fifteen minutes. Lew knew it. He was sitting in the phone booth of a Shoney’s, twenty miles outside of Chicago. He had eaten the breakfast buffet, drunk two cups of fully leaded coffee, and watched the parking lot for signs of Victor Lee’s car. There had been none.
Ann had accepted the collect call.
“Three,” she said, taking a bite of biscotti as she sat in her office chair. “I am to be thrice-blessed.”
“I saw a man on the street when I driving. He was holding up a sign that read WILL WORK FOR MONEY.”
“Did you really see this?”
“No, it’s a joke.”