Half World: A Novel Read online

  They are creating someone new.

  * * *

  “We need to know what he’ll do,” Clarke says. “What instructions he’ll take.”

  Dorn says, “That’s a big step.”

  “He just has to go in, wave the thing around.”

  Dorn says, “Loaded?”

  “Jesus, no.”

  Henry listens to the conversation as if it were happening without him, as if it were not occurring in the same room.

  “And then what?” Dorn says.

  “Then we bring him back here,” Clarke says. “Ease him out of it. Send him on his way.”

  Clarke and Dorn look over at Henry, as if waiting for him to interject, to argue. This is a performance of sorts, Henry knows this. He watches, keeps quiet. This is information that he is simply supposed to absorb in advance of future events.

  * * *

  What is your name?

  Where are you from?

  Why are you here?

  What is your purpose here?

  Where did you get the gun?

  * * *

  Dorn says, “Will he do it?”

  “I don’t know.” Clarke pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, arches his back. Through the window, they can see Denver Dan sitting, restrained in his chair. Henry glances at the ledger to remind himself what day it is.

  Clarke says, “We won’t know until we know.”

  * * *

  My name is Lawrence Tarhammer.

  I am unmarried.

  I have no children.

  I came here for the money.

  I am in need of money.

  The gun is my own.

  36

  Halloween night. Ginnie loved the holiday, the costume making, the decorations. Henry can imagine her setting the large serving bowl on the front step, filling it with candy. Checking the sky, gauging the weather. Helping the children into their outfits. Thomas pushing his fists through the straw-packed sleeves of his scarecrow costume, Hannah affixing the pipe-cleaner butterfly antennae into her hair. The porch light burning in the gloom, the first neighborhood children coming up the hill, masked and garbed, bags and pillowcases at the ready.

  Through the mirror, he watches Dorn dress Denver Dan in a black sweater and slacks. Denver Dan silent, nearly motionless. Lifting a leg so Dorn can force on a shoe, one hand resting lightly on Dorn’s shoulder for balance. Staring at a point just over the door. Henry checks his watch, sets and winds Dorn and Clarke’s watches, returning them when the men come back into the office.

  * * *

  Ginnie looks at the clock on the mantel, handing Thomas and Hannah their pillowcases. Out the door, into the sidewalk parade. A drizzly, slate-gray evening. Falling into step with the neighbors’ wives, the women chatting while the children run up each walkway and ring the bell, waiting impatiently for the men of the house to open the door and feign fear or surprise, drop candy into each openmouthed bag.

  * * *

  “What’s this?” Clarke is holding a plastic Halloween mask he found on Dorn’s desk, a wide-eyed panda with black half-moon ears, a comically expansive smile.

  “Peter Panda,” Dorn says, sliding his watch over his wrist, checking the time.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I never disclose my methods.”

  Dorn pulls a gun out of his waistband.

  “Let me carry it,” Clarke says.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never held one before.”

  Dorn turns the gun in his hand, holding the barrel, hands it to Clarke.

  * * *

  Hannah has joined a group of girls from her school. They run a few houses ahead, as far from their mothers as they can without being called back. Across the street at the Sullivans’, Ginnie and Thomas wait behind a pair of children, headhunters with broom-handle spears and slashes of face paint. Doris Sullivan smiles when she sees Ginnie, claps her hands to her cheeks at the sight of Thomas the scarecrow.

  “And where’s Mr. March this evening?” she says, kneeling to drop an apple into Thomas’s pillowcase.

  “He had to work,” Ginnie says.

  “What a shame.” Doris looks up at Ginnie, smiles sympathetically. “He’s missing all the fun.”

  * * *

  Dorn checks to make sure the street is clear. They usher Denver Dan out to the Lincoln, collars up, hat brims down. Henry hasn’t been outside the apartments since they brought Dan in. Three days, four days. He puts his hands in his coat pocket and his fingertips find the corners of the ledger.

  They pull from the curb, hook around on the street, back down the hill.

  “What’s your name?” Dorn’s eyes up in the rearview mirror, finding Dan in the backseat between Henry and Clarke.

  Dan seems not to have registered the change in location. He stares at a point just above the windshield, lips pursed, head bobbing slightly.

  He says, “My name is Lawrence Tarhammer.”

  They cross into Chinatown and Clarke slides the panda mask over Dan’s face. Adjusts the eyeholes, rests the thin elastic band atop Dan’s ears. Clarke hands Dan the gun. They continue south, deeper, the streets narrowing.

  “Why are you here?” Dorn says.

  “I heard a voice that told me where I could get the money I need.” Dan’s words muffled behind the mask.

  “Whose voice?”

  “The voice comes from my television. You’ve heard the voice. It’s in your television, too.”

  “Where did you get the gun?” Dorn says.

  “The gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “The gun is my own.”

  Dorn guides the car into an alley, kills the headlights, the engine, lets the car drift before coming to a stop. The close-pressed walls are lined with garbage cans, service-entrance doors, fire escapes. The men sit and listen, watch for movement. Dorn exits first, adjusting his pants as he stands. He opens Henry’s door as Clarke steps out the other side. They stand in the alley, steam rising from the Lincoln’s hood, mingling with the fog. Denver Dan is still sitting in the backseat, staring at the same point above the windshield.

  “Lawrence.” Clarke’s voice low, carrying no farther than the car. He says the name again and Dan turns, looks at Clarke through the eyes of the panda mask, slides across the seat and out into the alley.

  * * *

  From the other side of the street, Ginnie watches as the neighbors’ children knock on her door, ring the bell, waiting impatiently before giving up on an answer, running from the house without noticing the bowl of candy on the front step.

  Thomas knocks at a neighbor’s house, the Bixbys’, freezes when the door opens. Ginnie whispers to him, Trick or treat, and Thomas repeats this, shouting his greeting into Mr. Bixby’s face.

  * * *

  Henry takes his position across the street, a few doors down from the liquor store. He can see through the front window, an oblique angle to the cashier’s counter. A man’s arm moving in and out of his field of vision, handing change to a customer who turns and exits the store, his bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. The customer walks down the street past Clarke in a dark doorway, past Dorn just inside the mouth of the alley.

  Henry watches the storefront, waiting to be sure there are no other customers. He lights a match and drops it into a puddle on the curb, the flame hissing and dying in the water. The signal flare. He shifts his eyes to the alleyway, the dark opening between the buildings. He sees nothing and then Denver Dan emerges, walking slowly, the eyes and mouth of his mask as dark as his clothes, black holes, only the white cheeks and forehead of the bear visible, glowing in the street’s low watery light.

  Dan walks in a perfectly straight line, no attempt to avoid the puddles in his path. Shoes wet, pant cuffs wet. His hands at his sides, swinging in time with his fo
otfalls, like a man approximating an idea of normal human movement.

  He reaches the front of the store and curls his hand around the handle and pulls.

  Henry walks down his side of the street, a greater angle of the liquor store coming into view through the window as he closes the gap. Dan stands in the center of the store’s main aisle, facing the front counter. The man behind the counter is old, with thin, graying hair, a slight hunchbacked curl to his shoulders. His back is to Denver Dan. There is a radio mounted high on the wall behind him, and the man is reaching up with a broom handle affixed with a coat hanger to change the station.

  Denver Dan stands motionless, arms at his sides.

  Lawrence Tarhammer. Henry needs to think of him as Lawrence Tarhammer.

  Clarke crosses the street, coming up a few doorways behind Henry. He is moving too quickly, too conspicuously, afraid that he’ll miss something. Henry watches the man in the liquor store turn the radio knob with his stick and coat hanger. A delicate, practiced movement. The broom handle trembling a little, the longer it stays aloft. Tarhammer standing, waiting for the man to turn.

  * * *

  The children empty their pillowcases onto the living room floor. They spread the candy across the carpet and Hannah begins taking inventory, dividing their spoils into disproportionate piles. Ginnie carries the serving bowl in from the front step. The street is nearly empty, just a few shadows at the doors of the farthest houses, stragglers, older kids. The fog lowering and the drizzle increasing until they are impossible to separate. A single gray thing. She turns out the porch light, closes the door.

  * * *

  The old man lowers his broomstick, sets it in a corner behind the counter. He turns and notices Tarhammer for the first time. Clarke is nearly at Henry’s side. There is some sort of exchange in the store, the old man saying something and then listening as Tarhammer says something through the mask. The rain has picked up and Henry struggles to see, the windows of the liquor store fogging from within. Tarhammer still in the same spot, rooted in the center of the store. Henry needs to check the rest of the street, to keep watch for someone coming, but he cannot take his eyes from the graying window. The old man says something else and tilts his head, waiting for a reply. Tarhammer reaches into his coat and his gloved hand comes away holding the gun. Henry hears Clarke take a sharp breath. He listens for the exhalation, but the sound doesn’t come. Tarhammer raises his arm. There is no hesitation. The old man yells something and starts to lift a hand and then there is a muzzle flash in the store and the sound of the gunshot and then Clarke’s exhaled breath. A red flash and the old man drops behind the counter. Tarhammer’s arm straight out in front of him, unwavering. Jesus Christ, Clarke says, and Henry is already in the street, has already closed half the distance to the liquor store. Tarhammer’s shape in the window shaking in his vision as he runs, the whole scene blurred by the fog and rain, the pavement hard under his shoes, and then he hears Dorn shouting from the alley, Leave him, and it takes a second time, Leave him, for that voice to pull Henry away, changing his trajectory so he is up on the sidewalk and running into the alley. Dorn ahead, Clarke coming up behind, all three sprinting to the Lincoln, Dorn gunning the car forward, then through a bewildering series of turns into deeper alleys, the sides of the car almost scraping the walls, bouncing over potholes and pavement humps, Henry and Clarke in the backseat with no one in between.

  Dorn finds Clarke in the rearview mirror. “Where was he shot?”

  “It looked like the shoulder.”

  “It looked like the shoulder or it was the shoulder?”

  “It looked like the shoulder.”

  Dorn says, “It looked like the head to me.”

  “Find a pay phone,” Henry says.

  “You want me to pull over?” Dorn incredulous.

  “We can’t stop,” Clarke says.

  Henry says, “Find one and pull over.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “Someone heard that shot, Hank,” Dorn says. “Someone will call.”

  “Pull the car over,” Henry says.

  Dorn’s eyes up in the rearview mirror, looking for Clarke again.

  “Fine,” Clarke says, meeting Dorn’s eyes and then looking away, out to the street. “Find a phone somewhere and drop him.”

  * * *

  They were in the north apartment when Henry came through the door, trailing water, rain dripping from the sleeves of his coat. Dorn stood in the kitchen doorway with his half-drained glass. He looked up when Henry entered the room.

  “Jesus, Hank, where have you been?”

  Henry crossed the floor. Clarke sat with a drink, the back of his head visible over the top of the sofa, his hair wet, newly combed.

  Dorn said, “Did you walk all the way up here?”

  Henry grabbed Clarke by the collar of his shirt, pulled him up and over the back of the sofa, Clarke’s drink falling to the floor, the glass breaking, his cigarette hitting the rug in a tiny burst of sparks. Clarke struggling, letting out a strangled cry of protest.

  Dorn stayed in the kitchen doorway, drinking, watching.

  “Hank.” Clarke squeaking. Henry with his hands around Clarke’s neck, pushing him into the floor. Clarke’s eyes wide, feet kicking, trying to get free, knocking over a lamp, spreading the broken glass from his drink, tearing the fabric of his slacks, the skin of his legs. Henry’s thumbs at his windpipe, pushing harder.

  “Hank, are you going to kill him, or what?” Dorn’s voice from the kitchen doorway. “Because if you’re not going to kill him, then you’re just making a mess.”

  Henry opened his hands. A dark necklace of finger marks forming across Clarke’s skin. Both men breathing hard, both wet, blood from Clarke’s leg smeared across the rug. Clarke coughing, rubbing his throat.

  Dorn took another drink. “I think you’d better go, Chip.”

  Clarke staggered to his feet, looked at Dorn, Henry, looked at his leg, his torn trousers. He moved past Henry to the coat tree, limping. They could hear his footfalls on the stairs, then the front door closing behind him.

  Henry was still standing behind the couch, the water from his hat dripping into the streaks of blood on the floor.

  Dorn set his glass in the sink. He walked into the living room, took in the scene. The broken glass, the blood, the toppled lamp. The open bedroom, the monstrous metal door, the shattered furniture within, the torn and strewn bedclothes, the chair with the straps where they’d kept Denver Dan.

  “Look at this fucking place,” he said.

  He crossed to the coat-tree, took his coat, his hat. Stepped over the stippled trail of Clarke’s blood and out the door.

  * * *

  Henry sat alone at his desk in the office, the contents of Denver Dan’s wallet spread out before him. The driver’s license, the Pledge of Allegiance card, the photographs of Dan’s wife and children.

  He had found a pay phone at the northern boundary of Chinatown and called for an ambulance. An operator had asked him what the emergency was.

  Henry wrote the address from Dan’s driver’s license into the ledger, then pushed the contents of the wallet into the trash can. He lit a match, dropped it in. A slip of paper caught first, the note where Dan’s wife had written his flight information, the name and address of his hotel. The paper curled in spasms, burning white to brown.

  The operator had asked Henry what the emergency was and Henry had said that a man had been shot. A shopkeeper. A shopkeeper had been shot in the head.

  He waited until everything from the wallet had burned, the cards and photos, the license. He watched them shrink and curl and powder, until there was nothing in the can but ash.

  * * *

  There was noise from the next motel room, muffled through the wall. A man and a couple of women laughing, beer bottles clinki
ng, music on a radio. Henry sat on the edge of the tub in the bathroom, washing his pants, his shirt, Clarke’s blood on the cuffs. A bar of soap from the tub, a shoe brush he’d found in the closet. A cigarette burning, perched on the porcelain beside him.

  He had gone home, had walked in the front door and stood in the hallway, and then he had turned away, back into the city. He had left a note, that he’d be away a few more days. He could not be there, in the house. Not with what he carried. What was still with him, on his clothes, in his head.

  At a bus station in the Mission District he had paid for a locker, placed the ledger inside. The key now sat beside his cigarette on the edge of the motel bathtub while he washed his slacks.

  More laughter from the next room. Someone’s body banging against the shared wall. He scrubbed his clothes until the color was gone. His hands shaking so badly that when he wanted to smoke he had to kneel beside the bathtub, lower his head to the edge of the tub and take the cigarette in his lips. Inhaling while his hands flopped, his knuckles drumming wildly on the floor.

  Henry Gladwell. Trying to get the name out of his head, his body. Unable to do so. Weir would know how. This is what he would ask Weir, now, if he could ask him anything. Not about the deception, the lies, the treason. He would ask how to remove this name, this person he’d created. How to return to the man he was before.

  37

  Roy Pritchard arrived half an hour late, coming through the rain into the automat, setting his umbrella and briefcase on the floor beside Henry’s table.

  “I can get this weather back in D.C.” Roy took off his overcoat, hung it across the back of his chair. He sat, noticed the slice of pie Henry had set on his side of the table. “Key lime,” he said. “You remembered.” He sliced a bite of pie with his fork, lifted it. “How’s Ginnie? How are the kids?”

  Henry nodded.

  “Adjusting?”

  “Yes.”

  Roy set his fork back down on the plate. “You look terrible, Henry.”