I write SILVESTRI under Englewood’s column, but with a question mark.
At the top of the page, above all the rest, I add KELLER in heavy block letters. Unfinished business. The way he disappeared so completely when we were hunting him, that suggests powerful interests working in his favor. Englewood again? By mentioning Big Reg’s name, he as good as confirmed it. If Englewood protected him before, clearing the way for him to kill Chad Macneil in Buenos Aires, is it possible Englewood also brought him back to Houston, where he murdered my John Doe, who may or may not be one of the paramilitaries by the name of Robert Johnson?
All the names. All the interconnections.
I check my phone for missed numbers, but Jeff hasn’t attempted to return my call.
Staring at the lists, going over them in black ink, making everything darker and darker, scoring deep lines into the page, I don’t know, I just don’t know how it all fits together.
But my sense of Reg Keller is this: he committed minor crimes for personal advantage, and when his back was to the wall, he went as far as homicide. Still, there’s a difference between putting a gun to someone’s head and pulling the trigger, and tying a person’s hands down and methodically skinning them.
Any of us, in the grip of desperation, with fear narrowing our options down, is capable of the first kind of evil. The second takes a special kind of sadist.
Is Keller one of them? I would have thought not.
Here’s the thing, though. Since we last met, Big Reg has been on an outlaw journey, traveling to darker regions of the mind, perhaps unlocking doors even he didn’t know were there before. The man I went up against two years ago might not have been capable of such brutality, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t today.
I’m flailing, just like I told Wilcox. But there’s one thing I’ve learned, and it’s this. Even when you don’t connect, even when your fist keeps slicing through air, if you keep punching, sooner or later, you’re bound to hit something.
On his way out, the old guy in the flat cap peers down at the mess I’ve made on the table. He tucks his paper under his arm, shaking his head.
I smile up at him. “You have a nice day.”
The gate outside Jeff’s auto garage is padlocked and there’s no sign of activity on the lot, just the row of picked-over car husks out front, the debris of tires and crushed glass, brown weeds pushing up through the cracks in the concrete. The blacked-out windows show a layer of baked-on grime, and the creases in the articulated garage doors are outlined in rust. I walk along the curb, inspecting the coils of barbed wire at the top of the fence, not relishing the prospect of making the climb.
A tall hedge separates the property from the undeveloped lot behind. I pick my way across the overgrown, potholed ground, looking for gaps in the bushes, hoping there’s a back way into the alley I parked inside during my first visit. There’s no opening in the fence, but the wire stops where the fence meets the hedge.
I glance around to see if anyone’s watching. Across a side street is a liquor store with burglar bars over the windows. Next to it, some itinerant workers are loitering in the Burger King parking lot, but they aren’t paying attention to what I’m up to-or if they are, they’re making a point of not showing it.
The hedge is inside the fence on Jeff’s property, so I have to shimmy up, pushing my shoes into the links for a toehold. The climb is awkward rather than difficult, and soon my leg is over the top, seeking purchase among the tree branches. It’s a pine hedge, prickly and too fragile to support my weight, so there’s no choice but to slide down the fence itself, scrubbing my back against the needles. Once I reach the ground, I’m sandwiched by the hedge on one side and the fence on the other, with only a pocket of space to move around in and no visible path through the foliage. Wandering again, but in a not-so-dark wood. Covering my face with my upraised arms, I push my way through.
Outside the hedge, I’m cut off by the bumper of an old Plymouth Barracuda with no glass and a stripped interior. In the dark, the old muscle cars had looked a little better than they do in the blazing daylight.
After brushing myself off, I go to the back door with its row of dead bolts, pounding out a beat with my fist. Nothing. I knock again, then try the handle. The door doesn’t budge.
I call out. “Jeff?”
Silence.
I walk around the garage, trying the big bay doors, which are firmly shut, looking for gaps in the blackout that covers all the glass. The old entrance, a metal-framed glass door, is missing its bottom panel, the gap covered in cardboard. I work the corner free with my foot, but there’s something blocking the other side. It feels like a heavy cart or shelf, maybe some kind of workbench. There’s no space to crawl through, even if I relished the thought of forcing my way in on hands and knees, ruining my clothes on the greasy concrete.
The workers at the Burger King are stealing glances my way. It doesn’t matter. They are not going to call the cops to report a suspicious prowler on a seemingly abandoned property. They’re just curious, that’s all.
I try Jeff’s number again, listening at the gap in the cardboard in case the phone rings inside the garage. There’s no sound in there and no answer on the line. I make up my mind to get inside, so I start scouring every car on the lot, peering into threadbare backseats and holed-out trunks for a stray crowbar or a length of pipe.
Then it happens.
The crowd at Burger King starts going “Oh” and “Ah,” like guys in front of a football game when the quarterback is sacked, and then I hear the metallic rattling of chains and the big gate heaving on its dry hinges. I step out from behind the trunk of a catercorner land yacht just in time to intercept Jeff with his arm cocked high in the air, some kind of vicious-looking club in his hand.
I raise my arm to block, clenching my teeth for impact.
“March,” he says, lowering the club. He takes a step backward.
“Where did you come from?” I ask. “Why aren’t you answering my calls?”
He glances at the club in his hand, a short, studded hardwood rod that swells toward the tip, the handle wrapped in tape, and smiles with embarrassment. “I’ve had some trouble with people trespassing, mostly vagrants, so I made them a little something to remember me by. If I’d have realized it was you. .”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
Through the open gate I see an old Camaro on the curb behind my car, its door hanging open, the finish dull enough that it could have been stored in a barn for the past decade. Parked on this lot, it would pretty much blend in, only it runs.
“Listen, let’s go inside,” he says. “People are watching.”
“Give me that,” I say, reaching for the club.
He surrenders it. “Can we go in now?”
I walk back to the garage while he retrieves his car and drives it inside the gate. We head around back, side by side and silent. He works some keys out of his jeans pocket and undoes the dead bolts. Inside, the air is stifling. He turns on the fan, then goes to a window unit air-conditioner I hadn’t noticed the first time. It shudders to life with a dull hum.