Children of Paranoia

  I wanted to answer him. I wanted to tell him about the godforsaken War that I was trapped in. I wanted to tell him that he was actually the lucky one and that I was the unlucky one—that I would gladly take two bullets to be in his shoes. I wanted to explain to him that I was a good person. Even more than that, I wanted him to assure me that he knew that I was a good person. But there never seemed to be enough time for anything. “It was a mistake,” I told him. I don’t think he would have understood anything else. Then I got up to leave.

  I had one more stop to make before leaving Montreal. It was about three in the morning when I finally made it to your apartment. I woke up your roommate when I hit the buzzer but you didn’t mind. When I got up to your apartment, you pulled me into your room and, before I could speak, kissed me deeply. “I have to leave,” I told you once you released me from our kiss. My entire body shaking as I spoke.

  “Why? What happened?” you asked, your voice full of concern. You were worried about me. No one had worried about me like that since I was a child.

  “Nothing. I have to leave. Business. Some crazy stuff happened with my business.” I couldn’t control the shaking.

  You took my hands in yours to steady the shaking. “Are you okay?”

  I looked you in the eyes. They were strong. “I’ll be all right,” I finally responded. “But I have to go.” Each word was painful. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.” I felt like I was being punched in the stomach with each sentence. “And I’ll come back soon. I promise.”

  “Okay,” you replied. “It’s okay.” You rubbed your hands on mine to sooth me.

  I leaned in toward your face and we kissed. I prayed that it wouldn’t be for the last time. “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you too,” you whispered back.

  I took a cab to the airport and from there I rented a car. I drove through dawn. I saw the sunrise out of my car window. I crossed the border sometime in the morning. I listened to French talk radio during the drive. I don’t understand a word of French. For some reason, the sound just soothed my nerves. Eventually, I stopped at a small roadside motel in Vermont. The parking lot was full of cars with ski racks and skis. Vacationers. I stumbled into my room and dropped onto the bed. Over the next twelve hours, I may or may not have slept—I can’t be sure—but I know that I didn’t move, not once. I just lay there, slowly trying to forget everything about my life except for you.

  Eight

  At about noon on Thursday I got up and went for a run. I had neglected to exercise during my time in Montreal and it almost cost me. I ran ten miles. When I got back to the motel, I did sit-ups and push-ups until I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. I was hoping that the exercise would help to calm my nerves. It didn’t. I felt trapped in the little snowbound motel. I felt like I was about to spontaneously combust. Even if I got in my car and drove, I had nowhere to go.

  The first day went by and I didn’t call you. I wanted to. I even picked up the phone and started to dial countless times, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I could say to you without lying. I had promised not to lie to you so I didn’t call.

  I spent most of the rest of the day watching television. I drove to a nearby pizza place for lunch and dinner. That night my insomnia returned. I tossed and turned. I decided that your voice was the only thing that was going to keep me from going insane. I called you at two o’clock in the morning. I was trying to fend off madness.

  The phone rang three times before you picked up. You had been asleep. It made me jealous that you could sleep while my agonizing over you kept me awake. Your voice was quiet. It had that husky quality that it often has first thing in the morning. “Hello,” you said. I almost hung up the phone. I was suddenly afraid to speak. “Hello?” you repeated. “Joseph?” When you said my name the spell was broken. It gave me courage.

  “Hey, Maria,” I answered.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s late. Really late. I’m sorry for waking you up. I just wanted to hear your voice. I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

  “No. Don’t go,” you replied. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the States. I’m stuck in a motel for a few days but I’m hoping that I can come back to Montreal soon.” There was silence on the other end of the line. I wasn’t sure if you were nodding off. “Do you think you can wait for me?” I asked.

  “I wait for no man,” you replied with a laugh. You were slowly waking up. “So you better come back here soon.” Your voice made me feel better, like I belonged to the world.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” I replied, “but I’m going to have to go now and I’m not going to be able to call you for a couple of days.”

  “Why can’t you talk to me, Joe?” you asked. I could hear the disappointment in your voice.

  “When I get back, if you’ll still have me, I’ll tell you everything,” I replied. I’d have to lay my cards on the table at some point. You deserved as much.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise,” I replied. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Joseph?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.” The words were like a shot of morphine, a cure-all for all my pain.

  “I love you too,” I answered.

  “I’ll wait for you, for as long as you need me to.” Then you hung up. After our conversation, I slept.

  I exercised again the next day, going through the same routine. Friday afternoon I drove to the nearest bar. It was half roadhouse, half Swiss ski chalet. I sat alone at the bar and drank a couple of beers. I was just biding my time until that evening, when it would be safe to call Intel again. I threw the beers back and ordered a cheeseburger. The place began to get crowded as early-season skiers started coming in off the slopes. Soon the place was alive with people who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. That’s when I had to leave. I knew I didn’t belong there anymore.

  I drove back to the motel. As soon as I go into the room, I picked up the phone to dial up Intelligence. I was looking forward to hearing Brian’s voice even if he was going to yell at me. I took out the piece of paper that I had written the code for this call on. I went through each of the operators. Stephen Alexander. Eleanor Pearson. Rodney Grant. Finally, it was time to be transferred to a real person. I was ready to do everything that I could to convince Brian to send me back to Montreal, ostensibly to finish the job, but really so that I could see you again.

  “Hello, Joseph,” the voice, a deep, gravelly man’s voice, said. I had never heard the voice before. “This is Allen.” Allen? Who the hell was Allen? I looked back down at the piece of paper on which I had written the names—Stephen Alexander. Eleanor Pearson. Rodney Grant—just like I had said.

  “What?” I said. What I meant to say was “What the hell is going on?” but only the first word made it out of my mouth.

  “My name is Allen.” Allen? What happened to Brian? I was confused.

  “Where’s Matt?” I asked, careful not to let on that I knew Brian’s real name.

  “Matt’s been transferred. It was decided that the two of you no longer made for a productive working relationship. You’ll be working with me now.” Allen used the same tone with me that you’d use on a misbehaving five-year-old.

  “That doesn’t work for me,” I replied. I did my best to sound strong, even though I felt as weak as I’d ever felt before. “Did Matt ask to be transferred?”

  “No, he did not. In fact, Matt put up a pretty big fight. Apparently, he liked working with you. That may have been the problem. Let’s just say that we weren’t happy with how things were advancing with you. First there was the incident in Long Beach Island, where you were fraternizing with other soldiers without permission. Then you fuck up this hit in Montreal. It was decided that you needed to work with someone else—someone with a little more experience.”

  “I don’t get any say in this? I want to speak to Matt.” My voice was trembling. I could barely control my anger.


  “I don’t care who you want to speak with. You’re going to speak with me, and only me, from here on out.” Allen’s voice was even and monotone.

  “Fuck you,” I said, holding the phone an inch from my mouth. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I wanted it fixed. “I’m only working with Matt. Get Matt on the line, or I don’t do anything.” I kept trying to sound tough, but it was all bluster. I was scared. Brian was my only real connection to the world. My mother was clueless. I couldn’t get in touch with Jared and Michael without Brian’s help. Without Brian, I was simply adrift, alone. I didn’t know what this Allen character would be like, but I already knew that I didn’t like him.

  Allen responded to my impertinence with some righteous anger of his own. “Fuck me? Fuck me? Who the fuck do you think you are?” Despite the words, his voice was still calm. “You think you’re somebody? You’re nobody. You think you can make demands? You can’t ask for shit. We’ve got real men out there who have been doing what you do for decades. We have men out there who have dozens of kills under their belt. We’ve got men out there who have earned their stripes. You? You get sent to fucking Montreal in a rental car and fuck up a job because a guy’s got a couple of bodyguards? Who the fuck do you think you are? I’d like you to tell me who you think you are because I know who you are. You’re nobody. You’re a fucking pawn. Do you play chess, Joey?” I wanted to reach through the phone and wring his throat. “Do you?”

  “I know how to play, yeah,” I responded. Even in my own head, my voice began to sound like the voice of a petulant child.

  “Good. Then you know what your job is as a pawn. It’s your job to get pushed around. You’re the first one to get pushed into danger, and if we have the option to trade you for one of their pieces, and it looks like it will help the cause, so be it. You don’t get to make decisions about what happens to you. You move when we tell you to move. You kill when we tell you to kill. And if you survive, then maybe someday, just like the measly little pawn that you are, if you get pushed forward far enough, then you might turn into something useful. Then you can make demands. Until then, you little punk, you simply need to shut up.”

  My anger nearly boiled over. “If I’m the fucking pawn, then what are you, you bastard? You sit there doing nothing. You jabber on the phone all day. What the fuck are you?” I asked, seething.

  Allen spoke slowly when he answered, careful to enunciate every syllable. “I’m the pinky on the hand of the man who moves the pawn.” He didn’t sound proud. He was just stating a fact.

  I had nothing. I didn’t know how to fight the faceless voice on the other side of a phone. He had my life at his fingertips. It was the fourth rule. The one we didn’t teach the kiddies. Rule number one: No killing of innocent bystanders. Rule number two: No killing of anyone under eighteen. Rule number three: Babies born to babies get traded to the other side. Rule number four, the unspoken rule: Bite the hand of the man and he’ll bite you back, only he’ll bite you twice as hard. “Okay,” I finally relented. “I’m sorry. No more requests that I’m not entitled to.” The words pained me as I said them, but if I wanted to get back to Montreal, I’d somehow have to get in this guy’s good graces.

  “That’s better,” Allen said. “See, not so hard.”

  “So what do you have in store for me, because I’m ready to go back to Montreal to finish the job.” I didn’t have high hopes that he was going to send me back.

  “No one’s going to be finishing that job anytime soon, kid. You fucked it up too good already. I’ve got another job for you.”

  “Define soon,” I said without thinking.

  “You still don’t understand, do you, kid? I don’t have to define anything for you. You’ve got to earn respect and right now you’re running at a deficit. Soon is soon. Weeks, maybe months. We’ll send someone back there when the job’s ready to be done and not before that. If you impress me on this next job, maybe we’ll send you. Maybe we won’t.” I felt like a marionette, pull the strings and I’d dance. Weeks, maybe months. I had promised you that I’d be back sooner than that. What could I do?

  I relented. “Okay. What do you have for me?”

  “Naples, Florida. The safe house will be ready in three days. Your host will pick you up at the airport then, and no sooner. Take the first flight that day out of Boston. Your host will know what you look like. The details of your job will be there when you arrive.”

  “What do I do for the next three days?” I asked. I didn’t expect him to care.

  “You stay out of trouble, stay out of Canada, and don’t bother me.” Before I could say another word, Allen gave me the code—Jimmy Lane, Sharon Bench, Clifford Locklear. Then he hung up.

  Nine

  I spent the next two days the same way as I had spent the previous two. I’d exercise, watch bad television, go to the bar for some drinks and some food, and not sleep. I couldn’t get you out of my mind, not even for a moment—not that I tried. Each day dragged on endlessly. I considered going back to see you but I worried about what would happen if I got caught. If I got caught now, I’d probably never see you again. I decided that calling would be too painful. To hear your voice when I had no idea when I would see you again was too much. It wouldn’t be fair to you. That’s what I told myself, anyway. So I worked through each minute of each day, watching the clock, wishing that I could simply push the hands of the clock forward to make time move faster. Your last words to me echoed through my head: “I’ll wait for you, for as long as you need me to.” After two more agonizing days, I drove to Boston to catch a plane to Florida.

  I landed in the Fort Myers airport outside of Naples in the middle of the day. The crowd at the airport was sparse. There were a few grandparents there to greet their grandchildren but that was pretty much it. I stepped off the plane with my backpack. The backpack was lighter than usual because I had actually checked a bag this time, a small duffel bag that I could have carried on if it weren’t for its contents. I wasn’t ready to give up the gun yet. The way things were going, I thought that I might need it.

  I slung my backpack over one shoulder and had begun to walk toward the baggage claim when a broad, silver-haired man with a wide smile walked up to me. He extended his hand. “Joe?” he asked me as he presented himself. I nodded and shook his hand. His smile widened. His handshake was firm and deliberate, like the handshake of a man who had spent a lot of time shaking hands. I thought that maybe he had once been a salesman or a politician. He was wearing aviator glasses with clear lenses. His face was friendly and earnest. He looked way too honest to have been a politician. “Name’s Dan,” he said. “I think you’re staying with me for the next couple of days.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Dan,” I replied, speaking much more formally than I normally would, inadvertently aping Dan. “I appreciate you coming to pick me up.”

  “Of course. Of course. It’s an honor, really. I just want to pitch in where I can.” He nodded his head as he spoke. “You ready to go?”

  “Actually, I have to get my bag.”

  “I didn’t think that you boys checked bags. I thought you traveled as light as possible.” As he spoke, he turned and starting walking toward the baggage claim.

  “Usually I do, Dan. I just didn’t want to carry everything on the plane today.”

  Dan smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t blame you, kid. I don’t blame you. I can’t stand fighting for space in the overhead compartment.” We got to the baggage claim area and stood behind the women and children.

  “You been here long, Dan?” I asked, as we stood there, waiting for the buzzer to sound that would announce the arrival of the luggage from my flight.

  “Just about an hour,” he replied.

  “An hour? Was my flight delayed?” I asked. I knew that it hadn’t been.

  “No, sir. Right on time. But I didn’t want to keep a working boy like you waiting. Besides, I like coming here, watching the action, seeing the people coming and going.” I do
n’t think I’d ever met a man like Dan before. I looked over at him. He stood there, never taking his eyes off the baggage carousel even though there were no bags on it yet and it wasn’t moving.

  “Well, again, I appreciate it.”

  After we retrieved my bag, we walked to Dan’s car in the parking lot. Dan drove the car that I expected him to drive, a large white sedan, and for some reason, that made me happy. As Dan drove us into town, I peppered him with questions, trying to decode him. He was retired and, after a short stint in the navy, had indeed spent much of his life working as a salesman. He sold whiskey and cocktail napkins to bars in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He was excited to hear that I was from New Jersey too. He told me that nearly half the people in this part of Florida were from either New York or New Jersey. He had been a “working man”—those were the words he used to describe my job—in his earlier years too. Back in his day, he informed me, the soldiers worked and kept day jobs too. Traveling around as a salesman was good cover. He’d do his routes, make his sales, and once or twice a year duty would call, as he put it. I asked him how many people he had killed during his days as a “working man.” He said that he hadn’t kept track, that the numbers didn’t matter anyway and that he wouldn’t be proud of the number even if he knew it. He was just proud that he had been able to do his part during his time. Now he was proud to be helping me, proud that he still had something to give to the cause. Oddly, he made me feel proud too. I had almost forgotten what that felt like.