Hummingbird Salamander(66)

All these gray back roads that called to me, how doubling back and the walk to the houseboat I lived in now weren’t chores or a difficulty. The hawk on the wire. The deer staring from a vacant field. The mink staring at me from the side of the road, juxtaposed with dull clay and tall grasses. It wasn’t the idea of nature as Silvina saw it. Not the connection with an invisible world. But it meant something to me, moving through the wilderness. Maybe because I knew it would’ve meant something to Ned, too.

The thing that made me chuckle cleaning the Fusk or just staring at the half-burnt salamander: even as dysfunctional as it had been, I’d thought I’d needed some semblance of office camaraderie. I thought I’d needed small talk by the watercooler. The drunken Christmas party with the splayed-out table of miniature, perfectly plated appetizers.

No threat of that now. None of that was real. None of it now felt like it had ever been real.

But the growing sense of betrayal, looming—that was real.

For example, once you looked for a connection between Vilcapampa and Langer, you found it almost right away. Shell companies that colluded on both sides. The way Langer companies gave over to Vilcapampa companies’ resources Silvina couldn’t find otherwise. Most of these companies weren’t the ones Silvina had run, but some were. The way Silvina sold out Contila but let Langer slip away from the authorities. Or someone did.

I bought burner phones like they were breath mints. Tedious work, covering my tracks. Each new connection made me sadder, but also more suspicious. Silvina had needed Langer. Silvina had drawn Langer in. Vilcapampa had said she’d blackmailed him. What did that mean? Vilcapampa had meant it as proof Silvina was corrupt, but how could he be sure? Effective tactic: to accuse your enemy of the crime you had committed. Politicians did it all the time.

I settled on a scenario like a thesis, intending to poke holes in it. What if. What if Silvina got to stay in the U.S. because she gave up Langer’s organization to the authorities? Even as she played both sides because Vilcapampa Senior also engaged in wildlife trafficking? Or had at one time. And, during that period, Silvina had a desperate need to acquire or steal wildlife contraband and resell it to fund her own secret project because her family had cut her off.

Which brought me back to a question I couldn’t quite answer: Why, exactly, had Langer tried to kill me? Because of the past or because of the future?





[70]


The hardest thing—no, second hardest—I ever did was get up from beneath Silvina’s balcony. The agony of it, the painkillers Vilcapampa’s men had given me wearing off. The bullet wounds burning eyes that stared out from my body. Every time they blinked, I winced. And they wouldn’t stop blinking.

The way I landed, half in the bushes, half on concrete, bruising ribs, destroying my shoulder, some weakness in one ankle. Fractured fingers. I felt like a corpse trying to rise. Like the ground was pulling me down again.

Yet I did rise—and quickly. I ducked or rolled under the awning to the walkway, so they’d have to come down to end me. Helped that they stood up there for a while trying to get a bead on me. It was dark. I’d bumped my head, and my night vision was for shit. A wash. A blur, like I needed glasses. I tried to remember the area, headed in the direction of a wooded park.

The fall had gotten me free of one restraint, but the other had gotten twisted into the snapped-off plastic arm of the chair and looked like a weird, gangrenous bone dangling from my wrist.

My ankle wasn’t right. I kept tripping, feeling something give. I didn’t yet know how bad my leg was, or maybe what did the deed was walking on it after. I remember thinking these might be my last moments. Panicked that there was no time, no time left.

A person jogging past ignored me. I remember that, too. The utter banality of it. Was I clueless or was he? Except only one of us was a hulking, shambolic figure awkwardly clutching a dead salamander.

“Drunk,” I muttered to ward off evil. “Drunk,” I kept muttering when someone appeared on the sidewalk. I didn’t look back, kept waiting for a bullet in the back of the brain.

I reached the park. Heard sounds of pursuit, but something else had happened. Sirens rose, but not for me. No, of course not. The police weren’t looking for me. Yet. Vilcapampa’s men were. But I heard nothing that sounded like they were closing in. Even confused, disoriented, I found that odd. Hillman didn’t seem the type to give up like that.

At the back of the park was a shallow, overgrown creek littered with plastic bags and bottles and used needles. A sharp smell like chemicals. I followed it until the onrushing pain caught up and I lost consciousness.

I woke at dawn to a stray cat licking my face. I nudged it away, so thirsty I drank the rancid creek water. I knew I needed medical help. That parts numb felt as bad as the parts I knew were going to kill me. Soon enough, I’d be bruised all over.

Hillman had taken my work phone and wallet, but not the cash in my front pocket. I got a cab to my shed safe house, even if the first three rushed off when they got a good look at me.

I hoped no one knew about the shed, but I had no choice anyway. I almost cried when I saw Shovel Pig. I clutched Shovel Pig to me like a family pet I’d thought I’d never see again. Heavy with all I’d gathered before leaving the house.

I pulled the go-bag out from under the tarp. It had a lot of medical supplies, including painkillers. Once I’d stabilized what I could, I had a bad idea: I tried calling my husband on Bog. No answer. So maybe that meant something had happened to him. Or maybe it meant he’d taken me seriously and wasn’t going to answer a number he didn’t recognize.