Authors: David Vinjamuri
Operator - 01
Operator
by
David Vinjamuri
Copyright 2012 by
David Vinjamuri
. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9857756-1-2
Features Index
Dedication
for S.K. and Spenser, his namesake
Prologue – Wednesday
She almost misses the child: a small, frail thing trembling in the rain. The pale young woman hasn’t come looking for anyone, but only to right the trashcan. She was grading a stack of essays when she heard the metallic clatter outside her window. Seeing that it was the neighbor’s can and not hers, she was tempted to ignore the spill. But it is not in the woman’s constitution to let a thing go un-righted, and so she ventured outside in a bright yellow raincoat to investigate. As she opened her door she smelled the river, out of sight but always sharp in the air. The silver can had rolled to a halt at the concrete curb, its guts emptying sideways on the road. Not much of a spill, just a couple of intact white kitchen-size trash bags peeking out. The woman stuffed them one-two back in and replaced the lid. Then, anchoring the bottom of the can against her sneaker, the woman pulled it back upright. Only then did she see the girl. Actually, just the hair at first, a real mop of it, pale blond and tangled like seaweed.
Now the woman leans in to investigate. The woman has not seen this particular girl before, and she knows all the children of the neighborhood. This one looks to be a grade-schooler – perhaps nine or ten. The girl is sobbing gently, indifferent to the rain as it soaks through her light cotton dress. Her thin fingers are pressed together as if she’s praying while she rocks slowly back and forth. The pale woman sits down next to her and rests a hand lightly on the girl’s back. The girl flinches but never looks up. Instead, she starts crying in earnest, putting her weight on the stranger’s shoulder.
After a few moments the convulsions subside. The girl wipes her face with her fists as a toddler might, and looks up. The woman sees an ugly bruise covering the girl’s cheekbone. She touches it gently with her thumb, pulling away the strands of tangled hair, and sees that the bruise isn’t new. Whatever has the girl crying now hasn’t surfaced yet. The girl starts speaking softly. It’s not English but the woman understands some of what she’s saying. The girl is speaking Russian with an unfamiliar accent, not the St. Petersburg lilt that is familiar to the woman. “He hits me,” she makes out, “always he hits me.” Then the girl haltingly begins to tell her story and the pale woman forgets the cold rain on her feet, the trashcan and everything else.
“Yelena, come here at once!” a voice barks in Russian, and the girl and the woman both jump. The girl trembles. A man is striding across the yard. The woman sees his eyes first. They are so dark that the pupil fades into the iris. The man meets the woman’s startled stare with a basilisk’s gaze. He is built as thick as the metal trashcan beside her, but he crosses the lawn in four paces without seeming to hurry. Tattoos swirl down the sides of his neck from the fringe of the blond hair on his closely shaven scalp and snake down his thick forearms. A smile is fixed on his face as he looks at the woman, but his eyes are dead flat.
The woman’s instinct is to protect the girl, to shield her, but those reptilian eyes paralyze her and she does not move. As the thick man grabs hold of the girl’s wrist, he says gruffly in stumbling English, “Thank you for watching my daughter. She is being very bad tonight.” Then he pulls the girl onto her feet and drags her toward the house with the blue shutters. He speaks to the girl rapidly in Russian. The woman doesn’t understand the man until she hears him say, “You stupid girl, now you will pay.” Then the woman gasps involuntarily. The man stops immediately, standing stock still on the threshold of his doorway. “You speak Russian?” he asks slowly in Russian. The woman stares at him, still paralyzed by fear. Then, taking hold of herself she forces a smile, ignores the question and walks purposefully to her house. She steps through the front door, closes it and slams the deadbolt home. Without removing her raincoat she gradually slides down to the floor, her back against the door, sniffling at first and then descending into sobs. It takes her a few moments to regain her senses, to begin to think clearly.
She pulls herself up to the kitchen counter, grabs the phone and starts to dial 9-1-1, still shaking. She misdials twice and almost laughs at herself, at her inability to string three simple digits together. When she finally dials the number in sequence, the line rings twice and the 9-1-1 operator says, “9-1-1 – what is the nature of your emergency?” As the woman is about to respond, a hand clamps down on her mouth and the phone is suddenly not in her hands. She is pulled back off balance as she hears the words, “Hello? Hello?” in the accented voice that is burned into her memory. The man pauses for a moment, listening, then says contritely, “Very sorry I am trying to reach information for pizza delivery – Dominos.” Then he chuckles, the sound coming out of his throat like lumps of coal clattering in a hollow stove. “Please excuse, I am very sorry.” He hangs up the phone.
He releases his hand over the woman’s mouth and nose and she gasps for air. Before she can scream he slaps her across the face with the back of his hand, stunning her. Waving a stubby finger in her face with disapproval, he speaks to her again in Russian: “Now, what are we going to do with you?”
Chapter One – Friday
Angry voices spill from the darkness as I gently pull the door to the funeral home closed. From a distance, individual words are indecipherable, but the tone is unmistakable. A man and a woman stand twenty yards away on damp asphalt, centered in the pale circle of yellow light cast by a street lamp. The woman is barely over five feet tall, slender and pale with glossy, straight brown hair. She wears a black dress cut just below the knees and flat shoes. She is talking with her hands, jabbing her finger at the man’s chest to punctuate her words. The man towers over her by at least a foot and a half. He has blond hair and the clean-scrubbed look of a commuter, an office-worker. His jaw is chiseled and he looks like the kind of guy whose photo a teenage girl would cut out of a magazine. Except for his eyes, which are clear blue but not kind. The man is leaning into the argument, trying to intimidate the women with his size, but the woman clearly has him off-balance. There’s steam rising from his head as if he’s been running. He tries to interrupt the woman and fails, and I see his eyes narrow to slits. Then something the woman says makes him swear and take a step toward her. She does not step back.
The look on the blond man’s face freezes me in mid-step. My feet are carrying me in a different direction, toward my car. I want nothing more than to return to my motel room, put a hot towel over my head and let this awful day evaporate in the steam. But the conversation between these two strangers has crossed a line. I can feel it snap; the fragile filament of social contract between them is gone. I hesitate, and it saddens me. Time was I’d have stepped forward without a second thought. But as I look at the tall blond man looming over the short woman, I see him rocking on his heels, see his right hand clenching into a fist. I sigh and redirect my steps.
As I draw closer, the angry tones resolve into words. The man says, “
I’ll be damned if I let some little bitch talk to me like that…
” Self-narration in the middle of an argument is not a good sign. A few yards closer and I can see that his face is the same shade as a cherry-flavored popsicle. He may not have thrown a punch yet, but his fists are clenching and unclenching rhythmically. He is large and fit, but he has lost emotional control and he’s leaning forward onto his right foot, which puts him physically off-balance. His hands are callused at the knuckles, but not the way they get when you fight barehanded. His face is unmarked, and his nose has never been broken. He is right handed and not carrying a gun. If he has a knife, it’s not someplace he can reach it quickly. I relax marginally. Whoever this man is, he’s not a professional.
I consider how to defuse the argument as I approach the couple. When I get close enough for them to see me, I extend my hands in front of me with the palms up and fix an unnaturally broad smile on my face. As I open my mouth to speak, I hear the door to the funeral home open twenty yards behind me, followed by footfalls on the wooden porch. My mind transforms these sounds into shapes: a couple, the woman less than a hundred pounds in heels and the man about a hundred sixty, walking slowly with a cane. An elderly couple; I’ve seen them inside. I tune them out and step into the pale circle of light.
“Uh – pardon me – this is a little embarrassing but I think I’m turned around. I parked near Oak Street, do you know which way that is?” I speak a little louder than necessary and address the question to the small space between the man and the woman, causing them both to turn toward me. I see the man’s angry blue eyes sweep over me once, quickly. He registers me as a half-foot shorter than him and thus not a threat. That’s the lizard brain inside of him thinking. The woman’s eyes dart toward me briefly. They are hazel and larger than I expect. But she will not be distracted and quickly shifts her attention back to the man. She holds herself like a little terrier barking after a Doberman: indignant and furious without any sense of her tiny stature or what happens if the big dog takes the bait.
The question hangs in the space between the two of them for a second before the man responds. “It’s on the other side of the hill,” he says, barely glancing at me. He doesn’t make eye contact but jabs his finger in the direction I was heading. “That way.”
“Thanks. I really should know better, but it’s been a long time.” I keep my voice even and friendly, pretending to be oblivious to the intense silence that follows. I let the moment stretch out for a spell before asking, “Were you at the memorial service?”
“Yes,” the tall man responds. His voice lacks inflection. Hostility radiates off of him in waves. There’s another moment of tense silence. I keep smiling and nodding, like an amiable idiot or perhaps an overbearing uncle who hasn’t realized he’s not welcome at the family reunion. Then something in the air shifts imperceptibly. The woman turns to me.
“How did you know Mel?” she asks, her eyes meeting mine for the first time. I can see her register that I’m throwing her a lifeline.
“We…we dated in high school. I haven’t seen her in…” here I pause to count and then pause again as I realize the size of the number, “twelve years.” My throat is suddenly dry as I try to swallow.
Twelve years
. Then the man turns toward me. His eyes lock on mine like the targeting radar on an F-22 Raptor. I instinctively widen my stance and balance forward onto the balls of my feet.
The woman’s mouth drops open and a manicured hand quickly moves to cover it. “My God! Are you Mike Herne?” she asks.
I nod slowly, caught off-guard by the question. I take a closer look at this woman. She looks to be somewhere near my age, maybe just on the sunny side of thirty. She’s pretty in a refined way. The little black accents the curves on her small frame. It hugs her well enough that I’d have trouble believing it’s off the rack, though I’m no expert. A double-strand of pearls wraps her neck, large enough to flatter the dress but small enough to look elegant rather than vulgar. The jacket that hangs over it all, a sort of fitted black trench coat that she’s left open, probably cost more than my last car. Her nails are manicured short and glossed with clear-coat. The flats she is wearing look expensive, the leather reflecting the glow of the street lamp from somewhere deep inside. She obviously comes from money and is just as obviously not from Conestoga.
