The Between

  She makes a sound, a half laugh. “I’ve done got attached to them now. To her.”

  “Who?” Hilton asks.

  “My great-grands. The girl. If you’d gone, they would have followed you. He’d have seen to that. And just when I was starting to see things. Things to come, just maybe. If only—”

  “Look at me, Nana.”

  She shakes her head, more firmly. “You don’t want to see me like this, child.”

  “Yes I do. Look at me.”

  Slowly, she shifts on the bed until she has turned her body to face him. What remains of her brittle flesh is cleaved to her skull, with nothing but holes where her eyes and nose should be. Her lips are gone, exposing her teeth in a wide, maniacal death grin. He is afraid, but he forces himself to remain still. He extends his trembling hand to touch her flesh, which feels like dust. It is dust, he discovers; black particles remain on his fingers when he pulls them away.

  “Help me save them, Nana,” Hilton says.

  “You know they have no time that belongs to them. They came to be from what you stole. Breaks my heart to say it, but. . . ”

  Hilton hangs his head, the world’s sorrows weighing against his chest so he can hardly breathe. “I have nowhere left to go. I know that. I just want to fix it like you did for me, Nana. I want to fix it so they’re all right. All of them. You know what love is, Nana. You know what it can do.”

  Nana sighs, expelling the irresistible smell from inside her, the scent that nearly compels him to close his eyes and sleep. He shakes his head to clear the smell away. “I didn’t really fix it, child,” she says. “I tried to. I only thought I did.”

  “But you did. You fixed it. Show me how.”

  Nana stands, extending the grubby bones of her fingers for him to hold. He takes her hand, clinging to the frailness, and she surveys the room until she faces a door that stands where his room’s window used to be. “Here,” she says. “Ill show you.”

  When they walk through, they are standing on the curving sidewalk in front of his yard. It is late afternoon, and the shadowed street is deserted. Charlie is in the backyard barking, standing against the fence on his hind legs. Charlie knows something is wrong. Charlie smells something he is trained to detect in the air all around them, tormenting his keen senses.

  “This is the day,” Hilton says, shattered, knowing.

  “Yes. This is the day.”

  He searches the familiar surroundings hungrily for clues. The driveway is empty. There is a light on in the living room. Some sort of banner is strung across the picture window inside, but Hilton can’t make out the letters from where he stands with Nana. Charlie’s barking is frenzied.

  “Will it be soon?” Hilton asks.

  Nana nods, her revolting grin rocking up and down.

  “Show me what to do, Nana,” he begs. “You fought and stayed not only for me, but for them too. You know you did.”

  Nana does not answer, but Hilton follows her gaze to the aluminum garbage can standing in the grass by the curb, just outside of the coral wall. It is covered tightly. Yes, the answer is here, he realizes. This is what’s meant to be. He releases Nana’s hand and steps toward the can.

  “Once you open it, there’s no more doorways,” Nana says. “Can’t be no more. No more running, Hilton.”

  Hilton gazes at the garbage can and studies the ridges running up and down the light-colored metal. He takes a deep breath and grasps the cold handle. “Thank you, Nana,” he says, and lifts it.

  CHAPTER 31

  For two days, Hilton’s calls to Andres Puerta were unanswered. He called him virtually every two hours, from early morning until after eleven, always finding the same answering machine with a message against strange, synthesized music: “This is Andres. If it’s fate, we’ll catch up to each other. Leave a message.” When he called Raul to ask him why his brother never called back, Raul said it was unusual. Maybe he was out of town or staying at a friend’s. I don’t keep up with Andres’s friends, Raul said.

  While he waited, Hilton kept his mind occupied with routine.

  Bit by bit, his cramped economy room on the ground floor of the Holiday Inn was taking on aspects of the home he’d left behind. Each night just before midnight, he parked his Corolla beneath the dangling brown aerial roots of the huge weeping fig tree across the street from his house, just out of Charlie’s eyesight. From there, he simply watched and waited. He saw the glow of the television set that stayed on late in the living room, where presumably Dede was up by herself watching CNN. Occasionally, he saw the light in Kaya’s room on as she finished her homework. Usually, the house was dark except for the security lights. Although Curt had personally impounded his shotgun, and Hilton knew he wasn’t much use at his post except as an extra pair of eyes, at least he felt more in control being there. Just in case.

  At daybreak, after Dede turned off the floodlights, Hilton drove his car around the corner to get his breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts. When he returned after eight, Dede’s Audi was gone and he knew the house was empty. That was when he went inside, day by day, and retrieved the things he needed; clothes, his shaving kit, shoes, books. One day, he brought a big stuffed pink elephant for Kaya and an NBA All-Star basketball for Jamil and left the gifts on their beds. “Ill see you soon. I love you. Daddy.” He fought not to call them after school each day. He wasn’t ready. He needed his answers first, and only then could he be a father and husband to his family again.

  Each afternoon, Hilton returned to the hotel room to watch TV or read for a few hours, waiting in vain for his telephone to ring, then he headed up to North Dade by five o’clock.

  That was when Charles Ray came home from work.

  Hilton spotted Goode’s FBI tail right away; a navy blue Dodge Aries K car that sidled up soon after Goode arrived in his white Jeep each day. Hilton didn’t recognize the agent, a dark-haired man who couldn’t be more stereotypical in his white dress shirt and sunglasses. Hilton discovered that he could park on a strip of grass outside of the trailer park’s gate and still watch Goode through the fence. The agent, not hiding his presence, usually parked just inside the gate in the visitor’s parking lot. Goode apparently did part-time work as the park’s maintenance man, because he often emerged bare-chested with a shovel or a hammer.

  Every other day at five-thirty, Goode crossed the street to buy Marlboros from the Circle K, walking within feet of the agent’s car. If Goode ever noticed either of them, he didn’t show it. He strolled as casually as he had the day Hilton met him, hands in his pockets, his eyes looking nowhere in particular.

  Hilton wasn’t sure why he wanted to watch Goode. He did enjoy the knowledge that as long as Goode was in his sight, he couldn’t be prowling near his house after his family, but a part of him also believed he might learn something from him. He watched Goode’s trailer until about eleven, then drove back toward his house to begin his surveillance there.

  The third day after his visit to Raul, the front desk told Hilton he finally had a message. His heart danced until he glanced at the number, which he didn’t recognize. The name on the paper was simply Stan. Must be a mistake, he thought, but he dialed anyway. Stan might have some news about Andres Puerta.

  “Sunshine Gun Shop,” a man’s voice answered. The shop’s name sounded familiar. Of course. He’d bought his shotgun there just after New Year’s, when Dede received the threat at her office, but that was more than two months ago. How could the shop find him? Even Dede and Raul didn’t know where he was.

  “Is Stan there?” Hilton asked, uncertain.

  “You got him.”

  Hilton explained who he was, that he’d received a message at his hotel. “Oh, yeah, Mr. James. Just calling to remind you that your waiting period is over. Everything’s checked out. Come pick her up whenever you’re ready.”

  Jesus. Hilton didn’t speak for a moment, searching his mind for a recollection. Involuntarily, his breathing was already more shallow. “Pick up . . .”

  “We’ve
got your Colt forty-five. Paid for, ready to roll.”

  At the shop, two miles south on South Dixie Highway, Stan showed Hilton where he’d billed the gun to his American Express card and signed for it. Hilton searched his wallet and found his own copy of the receipt, dated the week before, two days after he moved out. His own signature. He’d bought the gun somewhere, somehow. He remembered entertaining the idea of getting a new gun after Curt took his shotgun, but he’d never gone through with it—as far as he knew. But then again, he had. Here he was.

  The nickel-plated military-style revolver looked huge to Hilton, and it sat heavy and foreign in his hand. He felt like a sleepwalker during the transaction, as though he’d snap awake at any moment. Stan asked him if he remembered how he’d shown him to load the clip. Remind me, Hilton said.

  That was how Hilton came to have a loaded gun tucked in his denim-jacket pocket the next time he made the drive to North Dade to park in front of Charles Ray Goode’s trailer park. Whenever his mind began to dwell on the impossibility of a purchase he couldn’t even remember, he forced himself to think about other things. There were too many other incidents that needed explanations. What’s done is done is done, he told himself. Someone used to tell him that all the time, a long time ago.

  It was Goode’s cigarette day, Hilton remembered. At 5:30 exactly Goode jogged down his trailer’s steps and walked through Poinciana Havens front gate, looking neither right nor left. He waited at Biscayne for a pause in the traffic flow, then he crossed the street and disappeared inside the Circle K.

  On impulse, Hilton jumped out of his car. He glanced back at the Aries K to see if the agent had seen Goode, but he couldn’t tell. The agents face was buried in his newspaper. Fucking useless. No wonder Goode had been able to slip away that night, and who knew how many other times before and since.

  Without realizing it, Hilton slid his hand inside of his pocket until it was wrapped around the cold butt of the gun. He was alarmed by his actions as he waited for an empty schoolbus to speed past him so he could cross the street. No wonder people testified in court they’d had no control, that they were moved by something larger. Maybe he really was schizophrenic, like Raul said. What was he doing stalking his stalker with a gun he had no recollection of buying? I’ll just watch him, he vowed. That’s all.

  Goode must have decided to stock up on more than Marlboros, because he wasn’t standing in the line at the front counter to ask for cigarettes. A young black woman in a red-and-white Circle K uniform manned the register, ringing up an old man’s six-packs of beer and lottery tickets. Hilton glanced up at the security mirror at the rear of the store and saw the red from Goode’s plaid shirt. He was standing at the magazine rack.

  Hilton stole to the row beside Goode’s, standing purposely close to the shelves, and pretended to scan the canned goods as he edged toward the back of the store. Just like the night in the backyard, his heart was shaking his frame with the intensity of its pumping. His palm felt clammy against the gun, so he let go of the steel to wipe his hand on his jeans. The next time he glanced up at the mirror, Goode’s reflection was gone.

  “I don’t know about you, but I can’t eat vegetables from a can,” a voice said next to him. “I like things natural, simple. That’s best.”

  Goode was running his fingers along the cans’ labels, not looking at Hilton. Goode’s sharp jawline needed a shave today, and his clothes smelled of cigarette smoke. He and Hilton were the same height, roughly the same build. Beside him, Hilton felt strangely at ease. Today he had the advantage. He felt a swell of power taking the place of his fear.

  “Useless, ain’t he?” Goode went on. “I call him Goober. Sometimes I wake him up to let him know when I’m going to work. I think he’d sleep all day, otherwise. He and a second man switch off. You’re a better tail than both of them put together.”

  “I guess my stakes are higher,” Hilton said.

  Goode smiled at him, sizing him up. Hilton felt swallowed by his eyes again, which seemed kind but glistened with something else beyond the pale, pale blue.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Goode said. “Someone is paying Goober a salary to protect you from me. But in the end, it turns out he’s really only protecting me from you. Except at night, of course. You leave at night. I don’t blame you. Goober sleeps, so that’s when I like to roam. But you know that already, don’t you? Good thing you have shitty aim.”

  Validation, for the first time. Hilton had allowed himself to believe he really might have only imagined Goode was in the yard that night, but now he knew. Finally, in all the haze and confusion, a truth he could seize. “How do you know I’m not wearing a wire?” Hilton asked.

  Goode didn’t even glance back his way, lifting a can of creamed corn to read the back label. “Because you’re not smart enough for that. You’re a lone wolf now. You’re sick of the system’s way, and so you’ve come up with your own way. Chances are, you’ve bought yourself a little number, maybe a thirty-eight, maybe a forty-five, and you sit there with it in your glove compartment waiting for the right moment. You already missed once, and you’re itching for your chance. You might have even brought it into the store with you right now. In your pocket, maybe? I see the bulge.”

  His heart’s thumping was jouncing Hilton’s brain by now. This was bigger than a fanatic’s death threats, he began to realize as he listened to Goode read his thoughts. This was bigger. It was part of something he wasn’t allowing himself to understand.

  Hilton could barely speak. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Goode laughed, carefully replacing the can of corn and picking up another. “I learned a lot from some pals of mine who were in ’Nam, and I never forgot what they told me. You know, it was mostly niggers they sent over there. And my buddies had to live with them, fight with them. They said you never scrap with a nigger. You know why? They don’t have anything to lose. They can beat your ass. I never underestimate a nigger. Never.”

  “You did once,” Hilton said.

  Goode glanced at him over his shoulder and shrugged. “That? Yeah, I ate some dirt that night. That’s what I get for deviating from simplicity. I didn’t trust myself. I was trying to think of a way maybe I could fuck your wife first, have some fun. I wanted to play with the little niglets. I even dropped by Kessie’s place to see them after school.”

  Hilton’s face changed abruptly, and he lost his sense of grounding. The upper hand he’d felt with Goode vanished as his face grew hot. Goode smiled, watching him. “I asked her if she needed someone to cut her grass. She said to come back next week. You niggers sure have some names, don’t you? Did I pronounce that right? Kessie Campbell. That was the name on her light bill. What tribe is that name from?”

  Hilton slid his trembling fingers back inside of his jacket pocket, once again finding the gun.

  “Uh-oh. Pissed him off now,” Goode said, amused, noticing Hilton’s movement. “I’ve got to admit, I admire you. You’ve gone through a lot of trouble to piss on my parade. It’s almost sad, in a remote way, because we both know I’m going to win.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Hilton asked, his fingers grasping the butt. He carefully slid his index fingertip across the trigger, and he felt his molars clamp together tightly. Now, his mind screamed. Get it over with now.

  Goode grinned at him, a beyond-human grin that chilled him. “I saw it in a dream,” he said, speaking slowly to emphasize his words. “You know how I’m going to do it, and you know when. That’s a fact. And when the time comes, it’ll be so simple it’ll blow your mind. Literally. You think you can change fate? Then shoot me. Do it.”

  I’ll show you fate, you son of a bitch, Hilton thought as his chest heaved. He yanked his hand from his pocket, snagging the gun against his jackets lining. He struggled to free it, hearing a jangling from the Circle K’s front door. “Excuse me,” came the old man’s voice. Someone else must have entered the store as the old man left, Hilton realized.

  “Too late,” Goode said, still grinning.
“That’ll be Goober. He’s wondering what’s taking me so long, if I slipped out back like I did once before. I don’t suppose you’re up to shooting it out with the FBI, are you?”

  The agent, still wearing his sunglasses, strolled casually past their aisle, glancing at Goode and making brief eye contact with Hilton, who quickly shoved his hand as far back into his pocket as it would go. Hilton couldn’t tell from the agent’s face whether or not he even recognized him as the man Goode was threatening. Apparently, the agent hadn’t seen the flash of metal from the gun.

  “That’s a real shame, bro,” Goode said. “You were so close. Things just aren’t working your way, are they?”

  “I can still shoot you.”

  “I know. That’s the beauty of it,” Goode said, dropping a can of black-eyed peas into Hilton’s free palm. “You can. But you won’t. That’s what I said about fate. Personally, I like it a hell of a lot more when it’s on my side.”

  Goode turned his back to Hilton and walked away. He didn’t glance back, and it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. Hilton saw Kaya’s face in his mind, imagining her horror if her father were shot dead by the FBI in a convenience store. This was not the way. This was not the time. There might not ever be a time.

  Hilton heard his murderer ask the cashier for two packs of Marlboros, calm and easy as could be.

  CHAPTER 32

  Kessie’s voice raised a half octave in surprise when she recognized Hilton on the telephone. “Dede just left here with your children,” she said. “She still calls me crying at night.”

  Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown me out of my own goddamn house, Hilton thought, but he suppressed his anger when he remembered his reason for calling. “I want you to listen to me, Mama Kessie.”

  “I won’t pass messages. Don’t put me in the middle.”

  “A white man came by your house, about six feet tall with light brown hair. He might have needed a shave. Do you know the one?”