The intermittent cries strengthened into a wail. Finally footsteps came audible within the house, then the beep of an alarm being turned off. The front door cracked so far as the security chain allowed, and a woman’s sleep-heavy face peered down. A gasp, then the door closed, the chain unclasped, and she stepped out onto the porch. A well-kept woman in her fifties, she clasped a blue bathrobe shut at her throat. Stunned. Her knees cracked as she crouched to grab the basket with trembling hands.
The blanket was twisted over itself, and she tugged at the folds frantically but gently, the cries growing louder, until finally she pulled back the last edge of fabric and stared down, dumbfounded.
A microcassette recorder.
The red ‘play’ light beamed up at her, the baby’s squawks issuing from the tiny speakers.
The crunch of a dead leaf floated over from the darkness of the front lawn, and then a man’s massive form melted into the cone of porch light. A gloved fist the size of a dumbbell flew at her, shattering her eye socket and knocking her back into the front door, rocketing it inward so hard the handle stuck in the drywall.
A moment of tranquillity. Even the crickets were awed into silence.
The large man stood at the edge of the porch, breath misting, shoulders slumped, his very presence an affront to the quiet suburban street. His plain, handsome face was oddly smooth, almost generic, as if his features were pressed through latex. He held a black duffel bag.
Another set of footsteps padded across the moist lawn, a second man finally entering the light. He was lean and of normal height, but he looked tiny next to his counterpart. He shuffled as he walked, one foot curled slightly inward, matching the awkward angle of his right wrist. As he finished tugging on his black gloves, his arms jerked ever so slightly, a symptom of the illness.
Ellen Rogers grunted on the foyer floor where she’d landed, one eye screwed off center, the skin dipping in the indentation where her cheekbone used to be. Her nose was split along the bridge, a glittering black seam. One leg was raised off the tile, paddling as if she were swimming. Her breaths were low, animal.
The men stepped inside, closed the door behind them, stared down at her. The lean one, William, said gently, ‘I know, honey, I know. Dodge can put some muscle behind a punch. I’m sorry for your face. Don’t think we wanted this any more than you.’
She whimpered and drooled blood onto the tile.
When Dodge dropped the duffel, it gave a metallic clank. He placed two cigarettes in his mouth, cocked his head, got them going with a cheap plastic lighter plucked from his shirt pocket, and passed one to his colleague. William sucked an inhale past yellowed teeth, closed his eyes, let a ghostly sheet of smoke rise from his parted lips.
‘Mr Rogers,’ he called down the hall. ‘Can we please have a word?’
The muted light thrown from the Tiffany lamp seemed the only thing holding darkness at bay. The office’s mallard-green walls dissolved into black; they might as well have not been there at all. Beyond the lip of the desk, a stock-ticker screen saver glowed out of nowhere. An artful photograph framed on the sofa’s console table showed the family a few years earlier posed cute-casual on the rear deck: proud parents leaning over beaming teenage son and daughter, matching smiles and pastel polo shirts. A nautical motif suffused the room – burnished brass compass, gold-plated telescope, antique loupe pinning down the parchment pages of a leather-bound atlas. It was the office of a man who fancied himself the captain of his own destiny. But William and Dodge hadn’t chosen the room for the design.
They’d chosen it because it was soundproof.
Ted Rogers propped up his wife on the distressed-leather couch, which Dodge had covered entirely with a plastic tarp. Ted had a softness befitting a man his age and circumstances. A fine, well-fed belly, spectacles accenting a round face, a close-trimmed white-gray beard – all jiggling now with grief and terror. When William had asked him into the study, he’d taken one look at Dodge and complied with all instructions.
Ellen shuddered in her husband’s arms, murmuring incomprehensibly. Her neck kept going slack, Ted’s plump hands fussing to keep her head upright.
‘Boss Man is displeased.’ William scratched calmly at the patchy scruff on his neck. ‘That little move of yours, it’s gonna prove costly to him.’
Old cigar smoke had settled into the furnishings, sweet and comforting.
‘I… Listen, please, tell him I’m sorry,’ Ted said. ‘I understand, now, the gravity-’
William held up a finger. ‘What did Boss Man tell you?’
‘I can get it all back first thing tomorrow. I swear to you.’
‘What. Did. Boss. Man. Tell. You?’
Ted’s chest jerked beneath his bathrobe. ‘If I did anything to betray his trust, he’d kill me.’
William moved his hand in a circle, prompting, cigarette smoke swirling like a ribbon. ‘How would he kill you?’
Ted leaned forward, gagged a bit, wiped his mouth. His voice came out unnaturally high. ‘Painfully.’ His hand rose, chubby fingers splayed, a man used to resolving conflict, to meeting halfway, to finding sensible solutions. ‘Look’ – his rolling eyes found William again – ‘you can take anything. Whatever this has cost him, I can set right. I mean, he can’t possibly prefer to… to…’ He sputtered to a stop, an engine winding down.
William and Dodge just stared down at him.
Ted’s tongue poked at the inside of his lip, making that well-trimmed beard undulate. ‘I was in some trouble and made a stupid decision. But I can undo it. I will pay for whatever the costs of the fallout will be. I can take a third mortgage on the house. I have equity in… in-’
Beside him his wife keeled over, her bruised face pushed into the cushion. Ted began to weep. ‘Look at her. Let me get her to a hospital. Let me call 911. We won’t say what happened. There’s still time. We can still get everything straightened out.’
William turned the cigarette inward, studying the cherry. Then he ground it out against his front tooth. He placed the butt carefully into a Ziploc bag, which he returned to his pocket, then continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘My uncle used to tell me: All we have is our word. All we have is what we promise we will do. Our employer is a man of his word. And I’m a man of mine. Ethics, see? So we’re in a predicament here. We don’t like hurtin’ folks, but we have to do what we say. Following orders, like in the armed services, or the whole damn thing falls apart. It’s a sad business all around, but that’s how it’s gotta be.’ His close-set eyes never faltered. Strands of facial hair, strawberry blond and wiry, fringed the sallow skin of his jawline. The smell coming off him was medicinal and sour. ‘In our business you gotta make sure a man’s promise to you is upheld. If it’s not, you gotta set precedent. You, Ted, are that precedent.’
Ted thumbed back Ellen’s eyelid. The pupil, dark and dilated. ‘Can you, please, please’ – his hand tightened into a fist – ‘take her to the hospital? She had nothing to do with this. She knew nothing about-’
The gunshot, even muffled, brought him upright on the couch. Ellen’s head bobbed, and then, through the fresh tear in the drop cloth, a single feather floated up from the cushion, flecked crimson. Shock at the sight overtook Ted instantly – glazed eyes, spread mouth, ice-water tremble of his muscles, like a horse flank shuddering off flies. A small, shapeless noise escaped him, a vowel sound drawn out and out.