The Enigmatologist (11 page)

“Excuse me?” The colonel turned his head.

“Sorry, sir. I’ll, uh, I’ll tell the men to stand down.”

“You do that.”

Colonel Hollister paced the living room. He had been at
this for forty years, searching every town, city, and suburb in the country,
and just when he thought he was getting somewhere, a sixty-year-old alcoholic
had to go and throw a beer can into his plans. And Private Ramsey, being so
glib. Did he understand what it meant to dedicate one’s life to something? sacrificing
everything for the mission, family, friends, a life outside of service? He
could never perceive the world, see the full scope of it, know the classified
knowledge, the hidden dangers, understand that the awareness of those mysteries
eliminated choices, compelling the individual to dedicate their life to finding
and stopping threats that disguised themselves as friends, ultimately betraying
that trust by taking the most beloved person in the world, the son that
sacrifices had denied. Private Ramsey couldn’t understand what that was like.
No one could.

The Abernathy boy would be able to. But he didn’t realize
it. Not yet.

“Sir,” Private Ramsey said, “your orders?”

“Monitor the truck. Let me know where it goes.”

“I’m sorry this didn’t pan out, sir. I know how much you
wanted this to lead to something.” Private Ramsey spun his chair, faced Colonel
Hollister.

“Do you now?” Colonel Hollister stopped pacing, glared at
the private.

“Yes, sir. It’s frustrating, spending you time looking for
someone, only to…”

“I’ve been at this a long time, Airman. Longer than you’ve
been alive. And I’ve learned that patience wins the day. So we’ll wait, wait
until the man we’re looking for shows.”

“What if he never comes back? What if he disappears,
assumes a new identity, and it takes us another four years to track him down?”

“If this man is who I think he is, it’ll take another
forty years for him to reappear.”

“But…” Private Ramsey put his hands in his lap, studied at
them. The last time he
Skyped
his girlfriend they
talked about their future, she’d become a school teacher, he’d work whatever he
could while he went to college. Anything was better than a life in Los Alamos.
Unfortunately, that’s what they’d get, a lifelong assignment in a town of
secrets where you needed security clearance to cross the street.

“Don’t worry, Private,” Colonel Hollister said, with
disingenuous interest, “we won’t be here long.”

In the monitors, the truck parked in front of the trailer
from the photo.

“Our enemy is playing a longer game than we are. They’ve
been at it for centuries. So we have to play the long game, too. Whether we
want to or not.”

The old man stepped out of the truck, carrying the open
case of beer. He fumbled with his keys, dropped them and hit his head on the
door as he bent over to pick them off the ground. The door popped open. He
swayed and laughed and stumbled inside.

“And one of the virtues of playing the long game is that
you see each move for what it is, a short step one way or the other. Do you
know why this is important, why seeing the world like this is really a
beautiful thing?”

“No, sir.”

“It means that you have more than one piece in play at all
times.”

Two men walked up the basement stairs and into the living
room. They were the Special Forces operatives that had served as Colonel
Hollister’s security when he confronted John Abernathy. In a failed attempt to
look inconspicuous, they had traded their black uniforms, the vests holding
ammunition and other tools of urban soldiering, for windbreakers, jeans, tennis
shoes. One man pulled out a gun, checked his clip, and returned it to his
shoulder holster.

“So don’t worry, Private Ramsey, if our surveillance
didn’t pan out. It’s just one operation, one piece on a very large board.”

The
drunk slipped on the top step. He tumbled forward, almost falling into the
trailer, but caught himself, dropping the case of beer on the floor mat. Three
cans popped out, like they were expelled from a malfunctioning vending machine.
One
Slinkyed
end-over-end down the steps, landing on
the gravel. The other two rolled across the pitched floor, into the living
room, and under the removable coffee table. He swayed for a moment. The closest
piece of furniture in the small trailer was a cabinet next to the stove and he
flopped against it and yanked off his boots, flipping them. They caromed off
the cupboard and sink, landing on the dirt-stained linoleum.

He slapped his cheeks, then looked up at the off-white
acoustic tiled ceiling. He shook his head from side to side. He bounced,
building momentum, and shook his arms and hands like he was drying himself
after a swim. He exhaled three times, rapidly, emptying his lungs of air. On
the last breath, he inhaled deeply, filling his chest and stomach, then
grunted, loud and painful, like he was giving birth to a walrus with
diamond-studded tusks.

His legs stretched and grew until the hem of his pants
ended at his calves. His arms grew out of the sleeves, and his torso expanded,
untucking
his shirt. The thin, gray hairs on his head
blackened and thickened, growing several inches on the top, until it formed a
perfect pompadour. Sideburns grew from the pores along his jaw, ending just
below his ears. The skin and the wrinkles around his eyes, the visual
representation of his guzzled and seldom remembered life, tightened. The skin
on his body that sagged, his chin, man boobs, the undersides of his arms,
retracted until they resembled the semi-freshness of middle-age. His bulbous
nose, the physical sign of his alcoholism, reverted, the veins disappearing, the
extra cartilage vanishing. He unbuttoned his shirt and pants as his stomach
inflated into a small gut, and he wiggled his toes underneath it.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” Al
Leadbelly
said, finally returning home.

He hadn’t used his ‘Gus’ disguise in years.
Leadbelly
was grateful John had warned him about the Air
Force, giving him an excuse to become the old alcoholic for an afternoon. He
knew they were watching him, even before the bar fight. Over the past week he’d
been careful, drifting between the blind spots of their inefficiently placed
cameras. He also knew he’d have to leave town eventually. He’d even prepared
for it. But John showing at his job meant
Leadbelly
had to accelerate his plans, or as he liked to say in moments of drunken
cheesiness, ‘Get the Lead out.’

He opened the cabinet under the sink, the thin, brown
door. He took out the trashcan, spilling
SpaghettiOs
cans, candy bar wrappers, empty, cheese-filled hot dog packages, and empty tins
of cake icing. Behind where the trashcan rested, a hole had been drilled into
the wall.
Leadbelly
stuck his finger in it, pushed
the button inside it. The floor popped open, a false bottom. Among fake
passports, stacks of cash, and a copy of
Elvis, Live in
Nöbsak
,
Germany
, was an encrypted cell phone, bedazzled with the image of a naked
woman.

“He’s here, man,”
Leadbelly
said. “I, uh, I talked to him a couple a minutes ago.”

The voice on the other end sounded shrill, berating him.
He rolled his eyes. He’d spent his entire life working for them, helping them
achieve small objectives, miniscule pieces of a larger goal, and they still
didn’t trust him.

“Yeah, I know what to do. I, uh, I won’t let you down…
Seriously, man, you’re
gonna
bring that up? That was
just that one time…It won’t…If you
woulda
seen her.
The way she was shaking her…Shit, you’re really
gonna
…Jesus
Christ, it was just that one time…And that time in Atlantic City. But that was
it. I swear…Alright. And in New Orleans…Calm down. I got this…You don’t got…You
don’t got nothing to worry about, man…I know that’s what I said last time, but
this time I mean it…Alright, I love you, too, Momma. See you soon.”

All the work he did, hiding and documenting, it was
against his nature.
Leadbelly
was born for greatness,
born to entertain thousands of people, sweating under the lights, getting
women’s panties tossed at him on stage, partying all night with devoted female
fans. Not this covert business. It was enough to make an Elvis impersonator
start drinking.

Leadbelly
snatched a beer from his fridge
and chugged half of it. He broke the phone in half, removed the SIM card. The
phone clanged against the dirty dishes and basin as
Leadbelly
tossed it in the sink. He put the card in his pocket, his unbuttoned pants
hanging loosely around his hips. He couldn’t believe they thought he was
careless.

He had spent the past four years living in the trailer, a
home away from home. At first he resented being sent there, viewing it as a
punishment. He had lived most of his adult life in the real Vegas, the one with
the showgirls and cheap, all-you-can-eat buffets and lax public drunkenness
policies. Then he was unexpectedly sent back here, back to where everything
started. He didn’t understand it at first, but when he saw John at the
lumberyard, he understood why he’d been sent there, why he had to wait. He just
wondered when the others, the ones who exiled him, would let him tell John the
truth.

The shirt and pants clung to his body like plastic wrap on
an old ham. They smelled like stale booze and baloney. His regular clothes lay
in piles on his bedroom floor.
Leadbelly
yanked on
the accordion door, trying to get to them. It popped out of the wall and its
runner, screws, and small, plastic wheels flew across the room. He stumbled
back a few steps, the door in his hand. Laughing, he tossed it onto his unmade
bed, brown sheets wadded at its foot. His room was just as he left it, clothes
covering his bedroom floor, his closet door shut. He pulled a pair of pants and
a shirt from one pile and sniffed them. Clean enough. And tossed the smaller
clothes against the wall.

He’d be going home soon. He’d have to answer a lot of
questions, what he’d been doing all this time, why he only called when he
needed money, why he never married or settled down. He didn’t like the idea of
moving home. He’d be around friends, but it wasn’t the same as being on his
own. No one to answer to, staying up as late as he wanted, playing his music
whenever he felt like it. Moving home just seemed like a step backward.

 
His stomach
growled like he hadn’t eaten since lunch.

“Beer munchies,” he said, rubbing his belly.

In the kitchen, he slopped together some sandwiches,
peanut butter and banana, while singing a song about how much he loved
sandwiches and wished he had some hot sauce to put on them. His trailer smelled
like suntan lotion spread on the back of giant, monocle-wearing peanut. He
shoved a couple in his mouth, choked a little, then washed them down with
another beer, and
Ziplocked
the rest, setting them on
the counter.

His trailer was full of trash accumulated through neglect
and indifference. And even though he was moving, he knew he couldn’t leave it
like that.
Leadbelly
opened his cupboard and pulled
out a long knife.

In his living room, the aquarium and karate trophies. A
girl he met in a bar in Tucson told him should get a pet. He found the aquarium
at a rummage sale and inadvertently killed the first three fish to swim in its
green and slimed waters. Not wanting to see any more two-dollar fish float
upside down, it became a convenient place to store his karate trophies. He
tossed the empty aquarium onto the floor, breaking it. Karate statues tumbled
to the ground. He never really liked the aquarium. Foam stuffing spilled from
the couch cushions as he slashed them. He flipped his coffee table and kicked
his chair, breaking both. He emptied the cupboards in his kitchen, sending pots
and pans skidding against the ground, and dumped the drawers. Utensils,
coupons, and a rubber band ball crashed, floated, and bounced on the linoleum.

In his bedroom, he jerked his drawers out of the built-in
chest and dumped out the few clothes, socks, wife-beater t-shirts, underwear
with stretched out elastic. He picked up a red gym bag that lay in the corner.
A light traveler, he liked to pack the essentials. He took a deep breath and
opened his closet. When he saw the jumpsuit, he smiled.

“Oh, baby, it’s good to see you again,”
Leadbelly
said.

He gently took the sequined jumpsuit off the rack. He
hadn’t worn it in four years. But every night he opened his closet and dreamed
of a time when it was all he wore and longed for the day when he could wear it
again. He held the jumpsuit in both hands, one hand on the back of it, tickling
the sequins with his fingers. Light danced across the eagle’s chest. The gold
stars shimmered around it.

He lowered it on the bed and slowly slid the zipper down,
exposing the white interior of the suit. The hanger flopped in the shoulders
and he tossed it like a Frisbee. It hit the bedroom window, landing on a pile
of clothes. He scooped up the suit and folded it neatly, legs underneath, arms
behind the back, and nestled it into the gym bag, finally putting it on the
closet floor.

His room was a pile of dirty clothes, food wrappers, and
cheap cologne in plastic bottles.
Leadbelly
felt it
sent a certain message to anyone who visited, that he was too busy loving life
and the loving the ladies to clean up, but this wasn’t the message he wanted to
send anymore. He plunged the knife into his bed, slashing it. He lifted the
mattress and heaved it against the far wall and cut large, diagonal gashes into
its back. A hole had already been cut in the box spring.
Leadbelly
leaned over and pulled out a book and a stack of three-hundred and twelve
photos. He flipped through the photos, sighed, and set them next to the book,
its cracked leather back barely holding the cover together. The people who sent
him to the trailer park thought it was lost, but
Leadbelly
had kept it hidden for years like it was a once-in-a-lifetime find.

He took the book, closed his eyes, and kissed it.

“Shame I never got to know you, man,” he said to the book,
“but you never gave me the chance. You were right, I know that now. It was the
right call. But still…” That
sonuvabitch
abandoned
him, sent him away to be raised in the desert. Even though it had taken him
years to understand why it had to happen, when he thought about it, it still
hurt.

He wiped a tear from his eye. He set the photos on the
edge of the box spring. Next to the knife.

The book that he’d protected for all those years was his
father’s journal.
Leadbelly’s
heart almost exploded
when he first read his father’s thoughts and words, his love and hopes for the
son he kept. And just a few sentences about
Leadbelly
,
nothing more, coldly describing his thought process in deciding which child to
keep.
Leadbelly’s
mother tried to explain to him why
his father chose another son, but
Leadbelly
was young
and angry and didn’t understand. He wanted to hurt his father, to make him feel
what it was like to lose something you loved, but his father died before
Leadbelly
had a chance to meet him. When he was alone in
his trailer, a tipped-over bottle of whiskey spilling on the floor,
Leadbelly
often wondered how his life would have been
different if he had been allowed to stay. He wouldn’t have become an Elvis
impersonator, he knew that much. Sitting on the box spring, he felt the anger
building, urging him to lash out, to destroy something. He touched the book to
his forehead, set it on the photos. He picked up the knife, his face reflected
on the blade.

And slashed at the mattress again.

Leadbelly
panted and wiped the sweat with
his sleeve. He opened another beer and grabbed the sandwiches in the kitchen.

The clock, now resting on the floor, the image of a beer
spokesmodel
on its face, her arms gradually moving to
beer-thirty.

The jumpsuit lay neatly packed on the closet floor. He
loved it more than cheap beer, an open
mic
, or a
middle-aged woman with questionable morals. It needed to be protected, remain
clean and unsoiled for his travels. He layered the gym bag with Saran Wrap and
tossed in a couple of beers and the other peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
He picked a couple of black socks off the floor and sniffed them. They smelled
like rotten fish, but he shrugged his shoulders and slipped them on, zipping
the black patent leather boots over them.