Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Read online

  Dark Sky

  A novel by Joel Canfield

  Copyright 2015 © joined at the hip inc.

  Edited by Lisa Canfield

  www.copycoachlisa.com

  Cover illustration by A.J. Canfield

  www.ajcanfield.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law. Dogs are not allowed to read content without written permission provided by owner.

  Special thanks to Joshua James, who gets all of the blame for this.

  Contents

  Mr. Barry Filer

  The Island

  The Davidsons

  The Blue Toyota

  Dinner Date

  Gas Leak

  Lockdown

  Branson

  Debrief

  The Gallery

  Sleepover

  Family Time

  Milwaukee

  Last Stop

  Black Sun

  The Tank

  Homecoming

  The Hunt

  Recovery

  For Leese, of course.

  “It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.”

  General Douglas MacArthur, Speech to the Michigan legislature, May 15th, 1952

  “Out here, due process is a bullet.”

  John Wayne, The Green Berets

  Mr. Barry Filer

  Mr. Barry Filer was not a pretty man.

  That’s not a judgment on who he was as a human being, because I had just met the guy five seconds ago. And I don’t believe in all that ugly duckling shit – you know, that they’re really secretly swans. You better believe somebody ugly wrote that goddamn fairy tale.

  The truth is sometimes God turns the ugly inside out to warn everybody else about what they’re dealing with. And I had that kind of feeling about Mr. Barry Filer. But there I was, sitting in the hotel lobby bar sitting across from this guy. And, because business was business, I had to look at him.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure if he was looking at me.

  Because part of what made Mr. Barry Filer such a feast for the eyes was the fact that one of his eyes was what they call “lazy.” Make that extremely lazy. You couldn’t actually look Barry in the eyes, you could only look him in the eye – because its mate was always staring off towards Pittsburgh or some other random municipality.

  That’s the thing they say in favor of lazy eyes. That the lucky bastard who has one can see in two directions at once. Seems like that would give you a migraine the size of a Sasquatch, but who knows? Maybe it was more like you always got to view the world in split-screen, like your own personal version of 24. I always managed to follow whatever Jack Bauer was up to whenever there was more than one piece of video moving on my TV screen.

  Of course, the eyes were just the appetizer of the three-course meal that was Barry Filer’s face, the tuna tartare before the entrée. The main dish was the skin on said face. It looked a little like somebody tied this guy’s ankles to the trailer hitch of an SUV and dragged him facedown over sandpaper for a few miles. It was probably the result of something a lot less dramatic – the kind of catastrophic teenage acne that could make a guy think he would never get laid, even if God had custom-fitted him with an ocular set-up tailor-made for a threesome.

  That left dessert. Finishing off this dispiriting dinner, sitting on top like a rancid cherry on a vomit sundae, was a lump of jet black hair that looked like some kind of animal that had shot itself in the head after it caught a glimpse of itself in a polished silver hubcap in a parking lot. When I say lump, I mean lump. It didn’t seem like a stray hair could ever escape from that hirsute brick.

  We were in Midtown Manhattan, sitting in one of those sprawling endless hotel lobby bar areas that seemed like a waiting room for a corporate-sponsored Hell. Even though it was Saturday, there were still a lot of people wandering around uncomfortably dressed for business - especially the women. If you think sexism is dead, first of all, you’re an idiot, second of all, you never notice how we make the female gender engage in foot torture on a daily basis by tagging high heels as “sexy.” Maybe we guys should tie colorful strings around our balls and attach them to our necks with enough tension to lift them merrily above our cocks. Maybe that should be “sexy.”

  Anyway, Mr. Barry Filer was certainly dressed for success. He had on the best suit Joseph A. Bank had to offer, as well as a classy maroon tie. You couldn’t see a guy like this going casual – I even pictured him showering in a suit. Me, I went the other way with wardrobe. I was wearing my shittiest jeans and a black t-shirt, with my twenty-year-old leather jacket. I was pushing sixty and was increasingly at risk of looking ridiculous, as if Marlon Brando couldn’t figure out how to get past The Wild One and played Don Corleone as a greaser, but it was how I dressed, so fuck it.

  We sat across from each other with a small cushioned almost-table between us. Like I said, it was Saturday, but I didn’t care, I usually lost track of what day of the week it was anyway. After the perfunctory introductions and talk about the weather, I quickly realized this was not going to be a long meeting and I was grateful, because Mr. Barry Filer, who was probably in his late twenties, was nervous and just plain bad at human interaction. He stuttered and his voice was unpleasant. I don’t mean he made it unpleasant just for my benefit, it was just indiscriminately unpleasant. If a duck could talk – a real duck, not one of those Donald-Daffy shitbirds – it would sound like Barry. Extrapolate one of their quacks into English and you’ll get to what I mean. Better still, imagine Billy Corgan singing after a Drano margarita.

  “So…M-m-mister Bowman.”

  “Max.”

  “Max. I-I work for…”

  I stopped Barry in his tracks.

  “Mr. Filer, you’re from Washington. Do you really want me to know who you work for? Or would you rather be the only person I know about? You mentioned on the phone that extreme discretion would be involved here. So maybe whoever you’re doing this for would like to remain a whoever.”

  “Whomever.”

  “Granted.” Great, a grammar expert.

  He put his cupped right hand to his mouth and almost burped. Holy shit. This poor fucker was also perpetually gassy. In addition to the horrible head and voice, God installed a defective gut on this boy. A lawsuit was in order.

  ‘Well, y-y-you’re probably right. He…I was told you could find out certain things.” Pause. “You’re older than I thought.”

  “I’m not doing the Ironman, Barry. And this isn’t The Bourne Identity. I’m assuming I’m not going to have to jump through any windows or hang off the bottom of any helicopters. I’m just gathering information, correct?”

  Hand cupped to mouth. Almost burp.

  “Well, y-y-you were highly recommended by the Agency.”

  It was comical how that kept ‘em
coming twelve years later. I mean I had been in the CIA for a long time, starting way back when what was left of Reagan’s brain was Commander-in-Chief, so I established myself well enough. After I went freelance, I kept getting a steady stream of customers. Most of it was shit work. Usually, the Agency had lost track of an ex-agent and a higher-up for some reason got in a sweat about what had happened to him. Did he defect to China? Worse yet, was he writing a tell-all that might make that higher-up look like a moron, which was probably about as difficult as breathing? They didn’t have the time or the resources to go after all these lost sheep, so they hired me to do it, because I knew them and they knew me. And by the time I found the guy, they usually forgot they were looking for him.

  This was different. This was Mr. Barry Filer.

  Up until I met Barry, these jobs almost always started with a call from my old friend Howard Klein, who I started out with at Langley way back when. Howard was a good guy, but he was also a miserable man who married a miserable woman and was intent on having a miserable life – which, I guess, is why he stayed a government employee. That’s why I had to be careful with Howard – misery was just as dangerous as ugly. In his case, it made him resent me for my freedom. I told him repeatedly that it wasn’t all biscuits and gravy, that freedom didn’t include dental, but it still pissed him off that I could binge watch old Bonanza episodes on Netflix on a Wednesday if I wanted to.

  Anyway, I digress. Mr. Barry Filer obviously wasn’t with the Agency or he would’ve let me know. But he acted like he represented somebody else more important than both of us put together. My hair was up, I wanted to know more and I was sorry I had stopped him from giving me the name. So I tried another way back in.

  “Can I ask who recommended me?”

  “Well, it was m-m-my…I mean, me. I recommended you to m-m-me.”

  He gave me a creepy smile, like he was proud he learned so fast not to mention anybody else’s name – and even prouder that he had almost made a joke. There was no way for me to find out any more now. Since I had requested the lowering of the Cone of Silence, I couldn’t ask for it to be retracted. So I kept my cakehole shut and he kept on talking.

  “B-b-before I go on, I have to first m-m-make sure you’ll be…well, as we discussed…discreet. I n-n-need to know you can be trusted.”

  Sigh.

  “Barry, you had to already know I could be trusted before I walked into this lobby. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have called me in the first place. Asking a guy if he’s trustworthy is like asking him how big his dick is. You have no idea if he’s lying until you pull his pants down.”

  That puzzled him. It puzzled me. I have no idea how my mind works sometimes.

  “We…I checked you out,” he nodded. “Y-y-you’re right.”

  He pulled out an envelope. It was the envelope they leave in the hotel room with the chain’s logo on the back flap, next to the small three-page notepad and the cheap pen that looks like a straw filled with ink. But there was nothing cheap about this envelope - it was, as they say, bulging. Bulging to the point where the glue on that back flap was straining to do its job.

  Another creepy smile.

  “This is a fifty percent deposit. Cash.”

  He handed it over. I don’t usually look, but…

  “Shit.” I ripped open the back of the envelope and let my thumb travel over the top edges of the bounty of large denomination bills inside. I glanced back up at my new benefactor. Creepy smile was wider than ever. He knew how I’d react and wanted to be part of the excitement.

  “I know i-i-it’s a great deal more than your customary fee. But we…I want to m-m-make sure you come back for the second half. And that you understand how serious this particular thing is.”

  I hate high expectations as much as I hate Indian food.

  “A thing,” I said, almost in disgust. “I’m doing a thing.”

  Cupped hand, almost burp.

  “I-I didn’t mean to infer this was all that complicated. This is much like...what most clients approach you for.”

  “So I’m looking for somebody.”

  “K-k-kind of.”

  Kind of?

  Barry pulled out a flash drive from his suit jacket pocket. I reached out but he wasn’t ready to give it to me yet.

  “Th-there’s some basic information on here - for somebody you have to talk to first before you do anything else, in person. This is where discretion is v-v-vital. You don’t email this information – or any information you find out along the way. You don’t talk about any of it on the phone. You don’t share any of it with anyone else, period. Ever.”

  A big pause. One of his eyes had me in a death grip. I didn’t know if I was supposed to fold like a lawn chair or what.

  “Okay, Barry, chill out. I’m not in third grade and you’re not the principal. You already gave me the money, so let me go on my way and do what I do.”

  Wrong move to make. It was the first moment that I saw deep into his soul, and the only thing warm in there was the rage. It was from long ago, pre-pubic hair - kids beating him up about his eye, an asshole dad? Who knew. There’s never a shortage of shit to drag into adulthood to make sure we repeatedly fuck things up, especially when you look like Mr. Barry Filer.

  “I have to make sure it’s done right,” he shouted as loudly as he could without actually shouting. “As you’ll learn, a l-l-lot is involved.”

  Cupped hand, almost burp.

  I stuffed the envelope into my inside jacket pocket. It barely fit.

  “Look, Barry, you don’t need to worry. I’m old, but that means I’ve learned what not to do. As anybody who’s worked with me will tell you, I get things done and nobody hears anything about it afterwards.”

  “I know that. I’m more worried about your b-b-bedside manner.”

  I smiled. He had a point.

  “I’ll be good. Promise.”

  His shoulders visibly slumped. I had said the right thing, without really even trying to. He stood and extended his hand, I did the same. We quickly shook on it.

  Then he reached into his pocket.

  “Almost forgot.”

  His hand came out holding a cheap cell phone. Obviously a burner.

  “Use this to c-c-call me. Only this. The number is programmed in the phone. K-k-keep it on you at all times.”

  I took it - and the phone charger that he dug out of his pocket on the second try.

  “This is necessary?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “S-stay in touch.”

  “Count on it.”

  The Island

  As I rode the F train back home, I thought about Mr. Barry Filer. He flew all the way to New York to talk to me for less than three minutes. I guessed the flash drive would give me some answers, but I wanted to know more right then and there.

  I got off the subway and rode up the three endless escalators that delivered commuters up out of the bowels of Roosevelt Island. As I watched the tiled walls go by, I pulled out my iPhone, waiting for the service dots to appear in the upper left corner of the phone face. Yeah, I had an iPhone. I finally broke down and bought one about a year ago and now the fucking thing was more in charge of my life than I was. You did good, Steve Jobs, even though your bedside manner wasn’t reputed to be high quality either.

  My service dots appeared. I hit the Howard button in my Contacts list as I headed for the subway station exit, walking past the tall-as-me sculpture of what seemed to be a glass gong, which made no goddamn sense at all in my artistic estimation.

  The phone rang on the other end.

  “Hey, man.”

  The greeting always made me flinch. Howard Klein was the kind of guy who always said, “Hey, man,” because he thought it made him cool. Which wasn’t going to happen.

  “Howard. Just met up with somebody…”

  He immediately cut me off.

  “Are you on a secure line?”

  I looked around as if I was wondering who the fuck he was talking to, just to
entertain myself.

  “On a secure line? Howard, this is Max. Max Bowman. Yesterday, I looked at the pictures of your kid’s wedding on Instagram. What…”

  “You want to talk about shit, you need to be on a secure line.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I’ve been telling you for the last twelve years.”

  “It’s never exactly been a sticking point before.”

  “Well, it’s sticking now.”

  Oh, baby.

  I was outside, a nice end-of-April day after a winter that caused me to repeatedly question God’s existence, so I stopped by the retaining wall by the sidewalk that came up to my elbow, behind which was an elevated patch of grass and trees. I leaned back on the wall and allowed the rest of the subway riders to walk past me. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I needed to focus. I’m old enough to understand when things are rapidly getting fucked-up without me having to lift a finger.

  “You know, Howard, this is the second time today someone’s been very serious with me.”

  “You should try serious, it might look good on you.”

  “Howard, c’mon. I’m serious about what I do or you wouldn’t keep throwing my name around, would you?”

  “Look, something has changed. That’s all I can say. And you have to take that change seriously.”

  I was back in the principal’s office and, again, I had no idea why.

  “Howard, how about you stop pretending everything didn’t just get strange with this phone call? How about you admit that, up until now, you’ve been sending confidential information straight to my Yahoo! email account, the same account where I get spam about walk-in bathtubs, burial insurance and Russian brides, and that now all of a sudden it’s all about the secure lines?”