Fifty Mice Read online

  A joint checking account.

  A birth certificate for HELEN WARNER with both Edward James’s and Ginger’s names on it.

  More erasure. Jay’s head jerks up, cold sweat. Walls closing in. Cuts anxious eyes at Ginger, whose expression is unreadable, and Helen, who hasn’t moved.

  He darts past them both, to the front door, throws it open and goes lurching out across the porch.

  “PUBLIC!”

  Down the front steps, into the street, he can just make out the parade of golf carts disappearing back around the corner at the bottom of the hill, vanishing into the quaint clapboard backside of Avalon’s business district.

  He catches his breath.

  Avalon Bay: a sheet of imperfect, handmade glass.

  The sky: teal blue.

  The sun: fully disappeared over the rocky island’s western summit, casting its gentle twilight up into the narrow back reaches of the valley that cradles the town.

  This really is happening. And yet, in a sense, what is happening isn’t real.

  “Jimmy?”

  Jay turns to the voice of his neighbor. Barry Stone is a vague shape in the doorway of his house next door, framed by the beams of his short porch and shrouded by the darkness falling.

  Splintered ghosts of Ginger and Helen watch, from behind the front window, overlaid by Jay’s reflection as he comes back up onto his own porch. Seeing them, feeling the dull weight of neighbor Barry’s vigil in the shadows, everything gone spectral, illusive, his ability to parse this world confounded by legerdemain, scrims and props, constructs and consensual lies—Jay thinks: Oh, fuck.

  Cantonese opera, with all the face paint and swordplay and caterwauling, but without the happy ending.

  Or any ending.

  We’re all making it up as we go along.

  Helen clutches a pale stuffed animal Jay hasn’t seen before, and was, no doubt, the subject of her dogged search through all the boxes.

  Is Helen real?

  Clearly Ginger is a construct, captive just like him; she troubles and intrigues him, and despite her physical similarities with the girl, Jay begins to wonder if Ginger and Helen are in fact even related.

  Does it matter?

  Barry barks something from his porch, with an earnest tone of concern. Jay doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t care. He pretends he didn’t hear, and rolls his shoulders gently, testing the ache from his fall.

  Night’s curtain drops on Avalon.

  End of scene. No applause.

  Jay goes inside, where his new family waits for him in the warm embrace of artificial light.

  | 7 |

  “TWO O’CLOCK TOMORROW AFTERNOON, upstairs, Zane Grey Building, suite number 204. Dr. Magonis. Put the BE BACK AT sign in the window, the clock hands are broken, don’t worry about it. Nobody really cares. You want me to write this down?”

  No, he doesn’t.

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “Take a day to settle in.”

  A tiny space crammed with archaic entertainment product.

  Island Video.

  This is Jay’s new avocation: DVD impresario. An anachronistic business model left over from the last century. Public has carted him down here from the bungalow after Helen and Ginger left for school, and now the Fed loiters behind the glass display case that doubles as a counter, absently punching the old-fashioned cash register, watching the empty drawer roll out, and pushing it back in with his stomach.

  There’s a vintage landline wall telephone with a knotted, extra-long cord, but Jay holds little hope that it’s any different from the one in the house, which he already tried, as soon as he woke up, and discovered will connect with other phones on Catalina, but not the mainland. Not the world.

  “What’s Ginger in for?” Jay appears from a narrow side aisle with a couple of old videocassettes in plastic protective box sleeves. “Or am I supposed to tell you?”

  Public gives a pointedly delayed reaction. “Ha ha. That’s witty.” He shuts the drawer again with his gut. Sometimes Jay can sense something slightly off about Public; compared to the other marshals, less cop and more flimflam artist, making it up as he goes along, as if all this was just snake oil spilling off some crazy medicine wagon. But then he’ll gather and settle, clipped and officious, Eliot Ness: “Um. No. Ginger—”

  “Is that her real name?” Jay interrupts.

  Public ignores him, continuing, “—sort of helped her boyfriend kill a guy. So.”

  The way the Fed says it, kill a guy, makes it sound like nothing. Like it was a household chore, folding some laundry. Jay stays between the high shelves crammed with alphabetized jewel cases, studying Public for any sign of sarcasm or fallaciousness, wondering whether he should believe this or not.

  “But now she’s flipped on him for immunity, it’s all good.”

  All good. Jay wonders what it means to “help.” In light of Public’s dispassionate attitude toward killing. He’s found he can’t shake a picture of the silent little girl, Helen, fragile in her new school clothes, lunchbox and backpack, holding tightly on to Ginger’s hand as they went down the hill, warped unexpectedly by a flaw in the glass pane of the bay window in the bungalow’s front room, strange and beautiful, through which Jay, earlier this morning, watched them walk away from the house.

  And now he has to add this noise—that Ginger helped kill somebody—to the signal, and try to reassemble a clear picture from it. He can’t.

  “We’re hiding her until we can find the boyfriend.” Public continues talking. Deadpan: “He’s understandably upset about it. And worried that she might help, you know, convict him.”

  Jay wants to know who they killed. Public just stares back at him, blankly. “You can tell me why she’s here, but not why I’m here.”

  “Entirely different protocols,” Public says. “We need you to remember. I imagine Ginger would like to forget.”

  Jay holds up the VHS cassettes. “People still rent these?”

  Public shrugs. “People scarcely rent DVDs, do they?” Pops the cash drawer out, shuts it.

  Jay asks about the store policy on movies, can he just take them home and watch whatever he wants or does he have to actually sign them out and debit some account?

  Public shrugs again. “It’s your place, Jimmy.”

  “Jay.”

  Public sighs.

  “Jay,” Jay says again.

  The front door jingles and opens for a sun-browned, weather-beaten beach boy pushing forty: bleached hair, bowling shirt, flip-flops, and Oakleys. Jay thinks he saw him yesterday, on the back of a chubby old fishing scow moored along the main dock, sleeveless T-shirt and a crushed high-crown Padres cap, watching them caravan in to town from the heliport.

  “French films suck.” He slams two DVD jewel cases down on the counter. “And don’t even talk to me about pan and scan or the subtitles which live and die at the bottom of the screen where you can’t barely read ’em.” Noticing: “Where’s Gabe?”

  “New owner,” Public says, gesturing to the aisle.

  Beach boy squints at Jay. “Hi. Sam Dunn.”

  Jay glances at Public, knows which name Public wants Jay to use with this customer, and can’t bring himself to say it. “—Hi.”

  “What’d Gabe—?”

  “Skate Park in Fresno,” Public says. “Straight swap.”

  “Yowza. Really? Whoa.” His mouth droops, dubious. “Really.” Curious about Public: “Who are you?”

  “I’m the facilitator.” Public inclines his head toward Jay. “He’s the new Gabe.”

  Sam looks from Jay to Public, back again. It all seems to track for him. “Okay. Good enough. Okay. Well. Welcome to the rock, man. I don’t think I owe any late charges on these bastard children of frogs, so there you go. Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m here to serve.”
r />   “Where you living?”

  “Vieudelou,” Public tells the man.

  Sweet, is Sam Dunn’s opinion about that. “Some bitchin’ little Arts and Crafts gems up that way, right?” Then, almost wistful: “Gabe was a big-time Roberto Rodriguez fan. Grindhouse. Machete.”

  “El Mariachi,” Public says.

  “Yeah, but the original one.”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  Dunn’s quick laugh is a foghorn. Jay wonders if this is all more Kabuki theater for his benefit. Maybe everyone in Avalon is working with Public, part of the program, a performance-art piece in which Jay is the organizing principle.

  “Yo.” Dunn points to the jewel cases he’s left on the counter, slaps a big hand on Jay’s shoulder as he hurries past, door jangling behind him.

  “You didn’t tell him your name,” Public says, after moment.

  “What?”

  “Your name.”

  “You mean, Jay?”

  Public waits, unfazed.

  “Jay,” Jay says again.

  Public shakes his head. “You’re a willful man.”

  “Who chose ‘Jimmy’?” Jay asks.

  “James? I dunno,” Public replies, stubborn. “Probably your mom. Is it a family name? And why don’t you use the ‘Edward,’ I wonder?”

  “My mom is dead. Mom, dad, sister, brother—”

  “Stop.” Testy: “I’m sorry. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to create a safe situation for you here. And that includes using a name that no one can—”

  “Who? Who’s after me?” Jay snaps. “Maybe if I understood at least that part of it . . .”

  Public looks away, out the front window, at the harbor.

  “Unless you don’t know who it is,” Jay says.

  Nothing from Public.

  “That’s part of it, isn’t it? You don’t even know who you’re dealing with?” Maybe he’s misread Public completely, mistaken uncertainty for calculation. Jay smiles; he can’t help it. It’s just possible that they’re as lost as he is. “What do you know?”

  Public shakes his head, again, sardonic. “No. You first.”

  A standoff.

  The two men trade empty gazes.

  • • •

  Cotton-ball clouds race low across the crest of the rocky island mass only to dissipate over a whitecapped open sea. The mainland, Long Beach, San Pedro, is a smoggy mass, like mold on bread. A slatternly, once-modern, teal-and-ivory hydrofoil ferry idles at the concrete landing, waiting impatiently for the last few passengers to hurry aboard, then breaks free of its moorings, drifts sideways, engines rumbling, and slides away, into the bay dotted with sails and boats.

  Jay watches the boat from the small, deserted plaza at the south end of Crescent Street, where in the summer portable kiosks offer island tours, snorkling, kayaks, bicycle rentals, and shave ice. An old man with a stand-up easel is painting watercolors of the casino on the point. A day-trip couple sits at a steel table under a faded, flapping awning, with takeaway coffee and colorful caps.

  A silver-helmet tour group on Segways whirs past upright, its weary guide droning a Chamber of Commerce wiki: “When Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo found shore here in 1542, indigenous people had been occupying the island for over eight thousand years; they called this place Pimu and called themselves the Pimuvit.”

  At the edge of the bay the bow of the hydrofoil lifts and it guns away, dull thunder, leaving a contrail wake.

  “November twenty-fourth, 1602, on the eve of Saint Catherine’s Day, the galleon of a second Spanish adventurer, Sebastián Vizcaíno, sighted the island and named it Santa Catalina in honor of the princess and martyred patron saint of knife sharpeners, hatmakers, apologists, and unmarried girls.” And as the rolling tourists curl around a corner and disappear, “The Pimuvit were wiped out by syphilis gifted from the Spaniards, and were succeeded over the years by otter hunters, smugglers, prospectors, soldiers, film crews, adulterers, and William Wrigley Jr.’s Chicago Cubs for spring training . . .”

  A salt-pitted pay phone still offers service near the entrance to the main marine dock, the Green Pleasure Pier; Jay lifts the receiver, punches in numbers, listens to a phone ring on the other end of the line, and an operator answers:

  “What number are you calling?”

  “It’s a credit-card call to Los Angeles,” Jay says. “Can I give you—?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Warren,” the operator says, “but you can’t make that connection.”

  Jay toggles the cradle hook. Dials again, different number.

  “I’m sorry, but this call cannot be completed as dialed.”

  Same operator, not even trying to disguise her voice. Jay racks the receiver hard. Thinks. The phone starts to ring. And ring. And ring. He backs away from the booth. Sea gulls circle and scree.

  Crescent Street is empty. Faded flags snap and furl from shop-front eaves. An outboard motor pops, races, dies.

  A security guard stands hands on hips, akimbo, outside the ticketing booth on the ferry landing, sleeves shoved up and smiling, eyes behind dark aviators aimed directly at Jay. It’s Patterson, one of the federal denizens from Public’s L.A. safe house.

  He waves amiably at Jay.

  Jay turns away.

  • • •

  There is an impressive selection of Catalina Island maps and trail guides at the tiny grocery store where Floria, the wizened Latina behind the counter, extends him—James Warren, of 333 Vieudelou Avenue, she knows he just moved onto the island with the esposa melancólica and the niña reservada—a kind of informal store credit when he realizes and tells her that he left Jimmy’s wallet back at the house.

  Because it isn’t his.

  “No se preocupe de el,” she tells him, friendly. “You can pay next time you come in.”

  He spreads the Franko’s Guide Map he settled on across the flat of the seawall, and has to hold it with both hands to keep it from blowing away in the wind.

  All the private charter boats are off-limits, according to Hondo, the effervescent aspiring gigolo in the booking shack at the entrance to the Green Pleasure Pier. Hondo has teardrop tattoos under his eye that Jay has always assumed represented prison terms, but which Hondo cheerfully explains can mean number of years you did, yes, but also the number of people you whacked or the number of times you got done up the ass. Depending. But, prison, yeah, and, yes, he’s “in the program,” too, which is how he can say without qualification that there is no fucking way Jay would ever get access to a boat, not to mention they put a tracking device in their heads, did he know that? Hondo indicates a spot just under his ear that looks like a skin tag or a mole, and offers to palpate Jay’s neck skin to prove that something’s there, but Jay says he’ll take Hondo at his word, which Hondo much appreciates. “The bitch of it is,” Hondo says, his mood shifting, darkening, “you don’t know, you’re talking to some guy on the street, or in the Parrot, is he legit? or is he a Fed? or is he just another poor jerkoff like you and me? You don’t know. And after a while, man, that gets to you, I gotta say.”

  Now, a kayak, Hondo explains, you could steal, and will get Jay away from Avalon, sure, but Hondo doubts even he can paddle back to the mainland with the current and such, and Hondo’s been bulking up and taking supplements. And trying to find a hiding place in the rocky grottoes on the southern tip of the island is pointless, given the resources of the Feds.

  Not to mention the secret GPS tracking device implant in our heads, Jay points out.

  “To a T, man,” Hondo says gravely. “To a T.”

  Catalina is mostly uninhabited, and almost all of its permanent population lives in Avalon, a jumble of small houses and two- and three-story buildings with no cohesive architectural aesthetic. Nothing plumb, avenues coiling back on themselves, the perplexing street grid of the city is a pauper’s bo
wl of half-cooked spaghetti, a few stray noodles snaking up the hillsides and away to the highlands, north and south, providing access to the unpopulated interior of the island and an “airport in the sky” midway to Two Harbors, where rugged iconoclasts share with Boy Scouts and church camps and a marine science compound on the narrow isthmus of lowland that divides a deep and narrow rocky windward dent on the Pacific, from the more gracefully curved, leeward bay facing the Catalina Strait; hence: two harbors. According to Franko, there is ferry service from the mainland direct to this northern, unincorporated part of the island, and it occurs to Jay that perhaps he could find a way back to the city simply by hiking there.

  Of course, it subsequently occurs to him that this is so obvious as to be pointless in practice. Running to Two Harbors is the first contingency to which Public and the Feds would attend while securing the island, the first place they’d look when they found Jay had disappeared.

  But he’s convinced himself that this is what he should be thinking about, getting out.

  His reasoning: the shock of the abduction gave way to panicked delusions of escape by air shaft, too soon and too hastily improvised. Then the helpless interlude fueled by Kafkaesque conundrums fostered by strange marshals and blindfolds and legal limbo, followed by dislocation, followed by fear, but here, now, settled, feet on the ground, the reasonable course of action is to find a way out.

  After all, he got away once before, and it saved his life.

  Saved his life. Or lost it—as Hondo would say, depending.

  • • •

  Fish smells bliss in the cold wind from the bay.

  The water shimmers like foil, and the casino on the point provides bleak punctuation to the arc of seawall.

  Dozens of full-color property listings are pasted on the Beacon Realty window on Metropole, blocking any view of Jay as he unplugs the Beacon Realty golf cart parked just off the sidewalk, backs away, and takes off in it.

  If anyone asks, he’s just borrowing it.

  He humps southish, inland, past the summer rentals and small hotels, looking back over his shoulder to make sure nobody’s following him, rising up into the canyon until a switchback takes him on Tremont, then Country Club, the steady complaint of the electric motor worrying him a little; the golf cart tops out at maybe 20 mph, so if anybody has seen him go and wants to catch him, it won’t be hard.