Hunters often sight for seventy-five yards; in the desert we usually went out to four hundred. So I was to do half that.
There were no obvious witnesses at the Coralville dump. A lot of crows and a slightly pungent atmosphere. A hand-lettered sign saying SHOOTERS led me to the left.
The setup was simple. Two weathered picnic tables set up with sandbags, next to a plank platform for sighting in from a prone position. I would sit.
There were thick wooden supports about a yard square, spray-painted 100, 200, and 400. I went out to the 400-yard one and thumbtacked four targets there, and returned to the picnic tables.
I filled the magazine and slid it into place, seated the first round, and clicked off the safety. It was going to be loud. What would I say if a cop showed up? “Don’t bother me; I’m getting ready to shoot a bad person.” I put earplugs in deep, lined up the rifle, and peered through the scope.
It was so dim. Well, it was barely dawn. A long way from desert glare.
There was nobody around, but I said, “Ready on the firing line” in a loud voice. What did civilians say?
The first shot was pretty loud, even with the earplugs. Missed the target completely. They obviously had the wrong guy for this job.
I took a couple of deep breaths and did the zen thing, floating up there watching myself calm down. I quietly touched the hair-trigger and willed the bullet downrange. It did hit the target, about 11:00.
It had occurred to me that someday I might wind up being the target of this rifle, rather than the shooter. One way to protect myself would be to zero it off-center.
Upper left-hand quadrant, about 10:30, halfway from the crosshairs to the edge. So if anybody else used the rifle on you, the bullet would whish by harmlessly over your right shoulder.
And I didn’t plan to kill anybody with it anyway.
3.
Zeroing took less than an hour. No witnesses until I was packing up to leave. He nodded hello, unsmiling, and went to set up his equipment on the other picnic table. Checking on me? Not obviously. Old guy in an old car, local plates. I wrote down the plate number just in case, feeling a little foolish.
So I had taken the first step leading to a rewarding career in civilian assassination. Or the second step; I should have called the cops when I opened the box. Called the feds.
First I had to protect Kit. Get her way out of town before I went to the cops. The woman on the phone had been scarily specific.
I was going to meet Kit for lunch. She’d probably be safe at work. Better not call. Just pick her up and go to some random place.
Money. I could get $500 from the ATM. But the bank would be open in an hour. Empty out my accounts. Then have Kit do the same, and run like hell?
Maybe I was thinking too much like a storyteller. I should do the rational thing and go to the authorities.
Did I have enough evidence? A note that could be printed anywhere, a phone call I didn’t record, a rifle you could buy at Sears. And a story that sounds like something a storyteller would make up. A storyteller who wanted publicity, they would assume.
I should at least wait until I knew who the target was supposed to be. A recording of the next time they call wouldn’t hurt, either.
Did Kit still have a recorder in the glove compartment? I pulled over and found it, but it was the big high-fidelity one we’d used to interview Grand-dude. I’d want one I could carry in a pocket—surely the cops or spooks could extract the other side of a telephone conversation recorded from a couple of feet away.
If I went straight to the Radio Shack at the mall, it would be open in an hour. The rearview mirror showed a half mile of open road behind me; no one on my tail.
Do it. Get the small recorder . . . but also go to the savings bank and empty that account, then go to the checking bank and max out cash on AmEx and Visa. Then have Kit do the same?
Maybe I shouldn’t go home at all. They were watching. It wouldn’t be smart to rush in and start packing suitcases. But what would be smart?
My heart was hammering and my breath was short. Try to stop shaking. Try to think. Make a list.
1. Go to the police.
But then they would control whatever “2.” was going to be, and every number thereafter. My own main concern was protecting Kit, and then covering my own ass—or maybe it was the other way around, to be honest. Whatever came third was a distant third, though.
Would the police actually be protecting us? The mystery woman watching me would know when they showed up. How long would they stay interested if nothing else happened? Whoever was behind the rifle must have an agenda, but I didn’t even know whether they were left, right or orthogonal. Or how patient they might be.
If not the police, our only protection would be flight. No way we could hide in Iowa City.
I could pursue my writing career online; my agent could make credit transfers to a bank anywhere. I knew from research for my first book how to build a new identity, a bogus paper trail, without spending a fortune or breaking any serious laws.
I’d be asking Kit to throw away her past and future. But if we were going to stay together, we didn’t have much choice.
Well, we did have one, Plan A. Go to the police. This is not a TV show. Just go to the fucking cops.
My reverie was broken by the crunch of gravel behind me, and I looked in the rearview mirror . . . and saw that I didn’t have to go to the cops. They had come to me. State trooper.
A short muscular guy with a Smokey-the-Bear hat stepped out of the car. Sunglasses. I rolled down the window while he was writing my license number into his notebook.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, exhaling tobacco and Clorets. “Is there a problem?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
He looked into the backseat. “Nice rifle.”
“Yes, sir. I was just down at the dump—”
“We know. We got a call.”
My mouth went dry. But why should it? “I haven’t . . . have I broken some law?”
“No, not really. The dump isn’t open to the public till nine, but it’s not posted. Some sport stole the sign.” He studied the gun. “You had pulled over, and we thought you might need assistance.”
“No, um . . . I was going to make a call. I don’t like to use the cell while I’m driving.”
“That’s smart; that’s good.” He was still looking at the rifle. “New gun?”
Better not say I think so. “Yes, sir.”
He nodded slowly. “You have papers on it?”
“Papers?” Oh, shit. “Do I need a permit for a rifle?”
“No. Not unless it’s full automatic. You got a bill of sale?”
“It was a gift.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Of course not.” Not a good time to rant about “search and seizure.” I started to open the door.
“Stay in the car. Sir.” He opened the back door and lifted the weapon out. He looked it over carefully and sniffed at the receiver.
“I just fired it,” I said helpfully.
“Hm . . . excuse me.” He carried it back to the squad car. He and the other cop sat there for a few minutes. I could hear the radio crackling but couldn’t understand what it was saying.
He came back without the rifle and asked for my driver’s license and registration. I gave him the license. “I don’t know where the registration is. It’s not my car.”
“No. You’re not Catherine Majors,” he said, deadpan. He walked back to the squad car and returned with the rifle. He put it in the back and closed the door with a quiet click.
“Thank you for your cooperation.” He gave the license back. “Please drive carefully.”
__________
I looked at the batteries and recorder on the seat next to me and had a melancholy recollection: the last time I saw my grandfather be
fore he died, just before I shipped for the desert. He and my dad and I had all had too much to drink. It was his eightieth birthday, and we had a recorder like this one going, while he talked about the past.
Grand-dude and I shared the bond of both having been drafted (Dad’s generation was spared), and we traded Basic Training memories. Then he started to talk about combat, which he never had done before.
He started to cry—not weeping, just his eyes leaking a little, dabbing, and he delivered a slurred soliloquy about how useless it all had been—how much less freedom we had after his war, Vietnam, than before; how the government used war to increase its control over its citizens, what a fucking waste it had all been. Dad got upset with him, me headed overseas in a couple of days.
But I said it wasn’t that different from what I heard in the barracks every night. Grand-dude said yeah, same-same. Soldiers aren’t fools.
But we go anyhow.
4.
Kit’s office was in the main administration building, a short walk from the cluster of student-oriented shops and restaurants downtown. It cost half as much as lunch to park anywhere nearby, so I found a place down in the student ghetto and walked the half mile through quiet streets, checking out every car that passed. This is where the bad guys would appear out of nowhere and tackle me and put a bag over my head and stuff me into the trunk of a car, and no one would notice.
In fact, every car seemed to be a student looking for a parking place. Perfect disguise.
I called Kit and suggested Hamburger Haven, not a ritzy place, but small enough so that no one could come in unobserved. I called her from the door, so I could just step inside to watch and wait.
There must have been something in my voice. She asked me what was wrong.
“Nothing. I just got pulled over by a cop,” I half lied. “No ticket, no problem.”
I sat down at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee, but then realized I was too fucking jumpy already, and changed it to a beer. “Breakfast of champions,” the waitress said, although it was after eleven. I guess I looked like someone who had just gotten up. And found an early Christmas present on the doormat.
I smiled at her and realized for the first time that I smelled like smokeless powder. Would anybody notice? With my current luck, I expected an off-duty cop to sit down next to me and say, “Been shootin’?”
Yeah, think I’ll go assassinate some stranger so the bad guys don’t give my girlfriend myelofibrosis. You ever have a day like that?
I finished the beer pretty fast, and the waitress was delivering my second as Kit walked through the door. She smiled. “Starting early?”
“You have no idea.” I picked up the beer. “Let’s sit in the back.”
The waitress trailed us with menus; we waved them off and ordered burgers. Kit sat down with a pleasant expectant smile. “How’s the bike?”
“Um, it’s good, good. We have a real problem.”
“We?”
“Not like you and me. I mean . . .” Where to start? “I’m in deep shit. And I’m afraid you are, too.”
“What’d you do? We?”
“Nothing! It’s just . . . right after you left this morning, the doorbell rang.”
“Before dawn?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and told her about the rifle, the phone call, the rifle range, and the state trooper, talking low and fast. She listened silently, eyes widening.
“And you haven’t gone to the police?”
“They wouldn’t believe me! It’s too fantastic.”
“But you have proof. You have the rifle. The state trooper’s report will verify that you took it straight out to the dump and . . . well, yeah. That’s a problem.”
“Like why didn’t I tell any of this to the Smokey? I guess it was the timing. Like he was part of it, following me.” Our burgers came and I took a bite and struggled to swallow it. Drank some beer. “I should’ve called the cops first thing, right after I found the rifle and the woman called. Hell, I shouldn’t have picked up the phone when it rang.”
“Let me smell your hand.” She took my right hand in hers and sniffed it. “You still smell like gunpowder. If we went to the police right now, that would strengthen your case.”
I wasn’t sure. “It’d mean I’ve fired a gun recently. But that’s already on record.”
She frowned. “Guess so.”
“Am I just being paranoid? Maybe I should go straight to the cops. But the woman on the phone expressly told me not to, or they’d come after you. Like Timmy what’s-his-name.”
“Jesus.” She sat back and looked around. “‘Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,’ my father would say.”
I bit my lip but then said it: “I’ve thought about your father.”
“What about him?”
“People who might have a reason to do this.”
She frowned and shook her head slightly. “No way. He likes you.”
“So he says, but he’s not sanguine about my earning potential. And he’s a hunter; he does know all about guns.”
“And a fellow veteran. He wouldn’t do this—not to you, not to me.”
“Yeah, I know. Grasping at straws.”
“Grasp at a different one.” She touched both my hands. “Who else would do this?”
“No one, or anyone. You write a book and you sort of become a target.”
“Some of the characters in your first book were based on real people, weren’t they? Maybe somebody didn’t like what you said.”
I shrugged. “Not saying it couldn’t happen. But an e-mail would get the message across better . . . besides, it’s too oblique for that, and too expensive. You could scare me as much with a postcard, if you said the right thing.”
“‘I’m going to trash your book in the New York Times.’”
“That might work. But I sort of favor ‘I will get you when you least expect it.’”
“You’ve given it some thought.”
“Well, yeah. Trying to put myself in the head of someone who would do this.”
She chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s not personal.”
“You’re the one they’re threatening to murder. That’s not personal?”
“What I mean is, think of it as a business proposition. They want you to do something illegal and probably dangerous. So they offer incentives, positive and negative. If the money isn’t enough, then maybe saving my life would be.”
I felt a tight squeezing in my chest. If it were just me being threatened, I’d have wiggle room; it would be hypothetical, and I could bargain with them—kill me and you won’t have anything. But I wouldn’t gamble with Kit’s life, and they knew that.
Kit took a paper notebook out of her purse and scribbled on a page. Tore it out and showed it to me: Assume we’re being watched and listened to. Pay the bill and follow me and don’t say anything about it.
“Yeah, sure.” I left a twenty on the table, nice tip, and followed her out the door. When we got to my car, she tugged on my sleeve and we kept walking. Her car was at the end of the block. I slid in on the passenger side. She got in and wrote another note: Could your clothes be bugged?
I shrugged and wrote possible.
She drove wordlessly to the Kmart on the outskirts of town. Parked in the fire lane and wrote, Get clothes and cash, change clothes. I’ll be back.
I’d already emptied out my cash card’s account, and maxed out advances on AmEx and Visa. Good thing Kmart takes cash.
I got some prewashed jeans and a plain shirt. On impulse I went back to the sporting goods section. They had plenty of firearms there, but I’d read about the new two-day waiting period.
So I couldn’t get a real gun, but there was a CO2-powered pellet gun that looked just like a service Glock, except for a bright orange nose, which I could spray-paint black.
I didn’t think these people would bluff too easily. But it was better than nothing.
There was no way I could just change clothes in the Kmart dressing room and walk out. So I paid for the jeans and shirt and took them to the adjoining McDonald’s. Broke a lifelong vow and bought a Coke there, and went into the men’s room. Changed into the new clothes and stuffed my old ones into the trash, must happen all the time. I got back to the Kmart entrance just as Kit pulled up. There was a big pink suitcase in the backseat, a red sock sticking out like a limp tongue.
She looked at me and smiled. “Okay. So let’s do a disappearing act.”
“What about your job?”
“I e-mailed him, death in the family, don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“Get some money?”
“Yes. I emptied out both accounts, about four grand.”
“Wow. I just had a little over a thousand.”
Her mouth made a small O and we stared at each other for a second, then it clicked. “Remember?” I said. “I don’t have the Hollywood money yet.”
“Shit, of course. I knew that and spaced it.” She faced forward and put the car in gear. “Left or right?”
“I-80, I guess. Put some miles between us and them.”
She hesitated. “Maybe back roads would be better.”
“Just a second. Let’s think.” She put it back into Park and looked at me with a forced expression of patience, or resignation.
“We leave my car in Iowa City, gun in the trunk, and head off to parts unknown. What happens to the car?”
“I think after two tickets they tow it away. Then wait for you to come bail it out. Auction it if you don’t show up.”