An experienced soldier would have taken a look at the battleground and he would have should have could have recognized the thing curled up in the blood-soaked sheets. An experienced soldier would have recognized Spain's daughter perhaps, but from some sixth sense, some intuition, not from the physical appearance because there was no similarity between the swollen, blood-encrusted, battered thing there in the streaked and splattered bed sheets and the lively, lithe young girl who'd walked into this motel room only a few hours earlier, all full of her own nervous energy and undamaged youth.
She awoke in the darkened, strange surroundings, wrapped in a stinking sheet that seemed to be stuck to her, and there was a roaring so loud that she couldn't hear the noise of the traffic right outside the ground-floor motel room barely a stone's throw from the highway. And she was filled with terror as she tried to open her eyes and she couldn't get them open, and in her dis-orientation and panic she opened her mouth to scream and heard nothing and the child who was the daughter of the one who called himself Spain lay in a bloody sheet soaking herself in her own urine and fear sweat and sobbing soundlessly — tears welling up inside bruised lids so puffy they could not should not would not open.
He has gone two days without sleep and he is very tired when he looks up and sees a police car pull into the cul-de-sac that leads to his driveway, and as always he prays, this man who never prays, he prays to God it will not be bad news. And there is also that little catch in the gut and in the chest that he instinctively feels when he sees the law. And for the moment his prayers are answered and it is not bad news, only an officer coming with more of the endless questions and paperwork.
They sit in the spotless, unused living room that Pat kept covered in transparent plastic for some reason he could never fathom, a beautifully designed, interior decorator's "concept" room, kept pristine and untouched by the inhabitants of 10 Ruffstone Terrace in Ladue. Now they sit there and he answers more routine questions, keeping his concentration because although his work was always compartmentalized, his private life sanitized, these are the police.
The cop sits on plastic, writing with a plastic pen, asking about plastic. They write numbers and more numbers. Expiration dates. Request copies of things. Examine old records. Every question is asked twelve different ways like a movie where the same take is shot in reverse angle, then from above, below, up through the ashtray, in the reflection of somebody's glasses, in the hubcaps of a car. Enough already. The cops hope to unearth a plastic trail. Spain suffers through it and the officer finally leaves, temporarily content with his newly acquired wealth of credit-card numbers. Some other cop is getting the same identical data from the credit-card companies. Why did they bother coming out, then? Because they are cops. Why didn't they just phone? Because they are cops. Why is the sky blue?
"When did you first think your daughter had run away, Mr. Spain?" the officer asked, writing. He had one of those flat, redneck voices that show boredom easily. Spain told him. He wondered when it was she had run away. She had run away from him a long, long time ago, he suspected.
"And you didn't report it until ..." Another question in a list of by-the-numbers rhetoricals that would be asked from a clipboard full of numbers. Everything came down to numbers. That's what he called the shots he'd taken for Ciprioni and the family, his OTHER family. Numbers. Funny how they liked to call things by other names, these Sicilians and Italianos he worked for. You didn't plan a robbery, you "made a move." You didn't hit some guy or whack him out, you "did a number." You "clipped" him. They didn't want their hands dirtied by it. Didn't want to connect themselves to the "numbers." Somebody else could watch those people bleed. Someone else could get that last breath blown into their face as the number became a cipher.
"Mr. Spain, who did you speak with at the Bank Card Center?"
"Just some woman. I didn't write her name down." This cop was calling him mister, a cold, bored tone in his redneck voice. Just a little suspicious, automatically, as they all are. The last one had called him Frank and been fake-hearty-hail-fellow with a phony, automatic rictus of a smile that would wink on and off as he spoke. Fucking cops.
"Had your daughter ever threatened to run away from home before?"
"No," he said quietly, his heavy-lidded eyes drooping. Christ almighty, he thought, get it done and get the hell out of here.
The questions continued. He was going over every fucking credit card. Plastic Man. Hey, cop, why don't you get a job with Visa? He sat there yess-ing and noing with the surface of his mind, stifling a yawn, and let himself think about what had put him here. Ciprioni had used him. These people who assured him he was like a son to them, they took his life and twisted it out of shape so that he could have nothing. He could not keep his own wife. Worse, he couldn't even keep his child. His own goddamn kid. They had done this to him with their fucking NUMBERS. He thought of all the chances he'd taken for them, all the bullshit he'd had to swallow — and here was the bottom line. Here is what he had to show for his years of dedication. A black hole of nothing.
The cop finally left and Spain got up and went to the door with him. He told Spain, "[something] find her soon," and Spain nodded and they shook hands, Spain looking down as they touched, and the car pulled away. The cop had middle-aged hands like his own, but they were worn from manual labor and the backs of the hands had freckles that looked like liver spots. Spain looked at his large, hairy hands, at the pattern of pores and wrinkles and scars on the backs of the hands. They were large, powerful hands but they didn't look as if they ever tilled soil or barked knuckles trying to work with a wrench in tight places or sweated pipe together or used a welder or ran a metal lathe.
He thought of the things he'd done with those hands. It made his eyes sting, as if from smoke.
He had not smoked since the 70s. One pack he'd puffed on. It was on a job. He'd taken this weird contract the details of which were no longer fresh, but he'd found himself in a situation where he had to make some sort of crude, homemade time bomb. It was something he had to throw together quickly, jury-rigged from available materials at hand. He was nothing if not field-expedient. The fuse had been a cigarette from a pack of Winstons he'd found. He'd pocketed the pack automatically and later, driving through the night, he'd allowed himself the indulgence of smoking the rest of the pack. He had not found a single moment of pleasure from inhaling the hot, throat-parching smoke. He'd faced some kind of a mini-demon and prevailed. One always assumed time would bring a remission, even for the four-pack-a-day gang. Not a minor victory.
He tried to imagine a cigarette in his fingers and couldn't, so he picked up a fountain pen like a cigarette and just as he did a pang of terrible fear stabbed at him. Something was wrong. It was that kind of awful and consuming paranoia that cannot be denied or ignored. He could feel his heart thumping and perspiration trickling down his sides and back and covering his forehead like a fever.
It was not read as a foreshadowing omen, but as a presence. Something was there. Pinpricks dotted his back. It was a strong aura, not foreboding so much as it was just . . . there. He clenched his teeth. Something or someone in back of him ... A presence. Somebody there in the empty house with him.