Chapter XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
Rybek suggested we go elsewhere to talk. Some of his neighbors would already be up and about, and we might be seen together. If we continued our conversation outside—or worse, if I was seen entering his apartment—he’d have no latitude should someone from BrightBlown come asking what he did or did not reveal to me. I gave him five minutes to lock up and warned him that if he tried to abscond, I’d imbue the rest of his existence with enough misery to cause even the spirits of tormented Christian martyrs to wince in sympathy. Just to be sure, I found a parking spot that offered a view of both the rear of his building and the jutting trunk of the Daewoo. I just hoped Rybek wouldn’t try to make an escape on foot, giving me no choice but to run him over.
In the end, he backed out of his drive with thirty seconds to spare. I followed him north to the Dunkin’ in West Falmouth Crossing, which opened at 4:30 a.m. to cater to those for whom the morning just didn’t sit right unless it started with a gallon of coffee and a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich. I ordered the smallest coffee they could offer, while Rybek went for chai tea and a bagel with cream cheese. I asked whether he minded if I took some notes, and he replied that he didn’t so long as his name didn’t appear. I labeled him “Mr. B,” B for Bud, which he told me he might adopt as his superhero identity.
“I was surprised when Wyatt showed up in Portland,” Rybek began. “I knew him back home, though I hadn’t seen him in a few years, not since he finished with the army. We didn’t have a falling-out. Life just sent us our separate ways.”
“But he was aware that you were living in the city?”
“He told me he heard from a mutual friend. I didn’t expect him to start at BrightBlown, though.”
“You mean you didn’t get him the job?”
“No, it was pure coincidence that we ended up working there together. I was out at the farm, and the day supervisor asked if I’d mind training the FNG—you know, the Fucking New Guy. That was Wyatt. When Donna Lawrence found out we were acquainted, I sensed she wasn’t overjoyed. Nothing was said, but Wyatt and I were rarely scheduled together. That had to be deliberate on Donna’s part.”
“But they couldn’t stop you from socializing.”
“No, though we didn’t meet up often. Wyatt kept to himself more than he used to, and later he had his girlfriend, Zetta, so he was spending time with her. He didn’t like it this far north, though. Wyatt’s a Southern boy through and through. He didn’t feel like he belonged in Maine, especially in winter.”
I couldn’t blame him. Outside Dunkin’, a customer misjudged the depth of an icy puddle in the parking lot and sank to his left ankle. At times like that even I, a committed Maine psychrophilic, might have been tempted to gaze longingly in the direction of sunnier climes. The guy with the wet leg shook it, cursed whatever god he believed in, and went on his way.
“At least his day can only get better,” Rybek remarked. “Unless it’s a sign that he ought to go home and lock his doors.”
“Do you believe in signs?”
“I’m starting to—bad omens, anyway. No offense meant.”
I had a natural suspicion of people who opened up to me too quickly: it frequently meant they were either being deceitful or had an agenda. Rybek, I believed, might be innocent of both. He came across as someone for whom dissimulation was too much effort.
“What?” he asked.
“I was just trying to decide how trustworthy you are.”
“And I haven’t even arrived at anything worth lying about yet.”
“You have the benefit of the doubt so far,” I said, “but I’m happy to withdraw it at any time.”
“It must be hard to have cynicism as a default mode.”
“Sentimentality wasn’t working, so I learned to live with the burden.”
“You need to smoke some weed, take up yoga, anything that could help. You’re a very wound-up person. I mean, that pistol-whipping threat, was it kind? Was it necessary?”
He spoke so sincerely that, for an instant, I really did want to hit him.
“You were speaking about Wyatt’s sense of dislocation,” I said.
“Yeah, he was unsettled,” Rybek resumed, “but he was also more nervous than I remembered. The old Wyatt had a calmness to him, while the new one—well, if I said he was always looking over his shoulder, it wouldn’t be far from the truth. I put it down to his time in the military. I’ve seen the army do that to people, especially if they served hard, like Wyatt.”
I paused in my note-taking.
“Wyatt claimed to have been a desk jockey—that he didn’t see any real combat, or only from a distance.”
“He told strangers that just to head them off. He wasn’t one of those blowhards who likes boasting about their time in uniform or showing off their tats to chicks in bars. But I’d heard stories about Wyatt down the years.”
“What kind of stories?”
“I’m betraying confidences here,” said Rybek.
“If it helps, think of me as a priest.”
“I’m not religious.”
“Then think of me as a selective amnesiac, but one with a short fuse before noon.”
Rybek gave me a sad look. “I bet you have no friends,” he said.
“Not at this hour.”
Rybek gave up.
“Wyatt might have started out in the National Guard,” he said, “but that’s not where he ended up. He worked in Army Special Operations. They call it Civil Affairs, which was how come Wyatt was able to make it sound like he was a desk jockey if someone tried to pin him down. But Civil Affairs was a whole lot more than shuffling paperwork.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because we discussed it, not long before he melted away. I told you, we’ve known each other a long time, Wyatt and me. A few weeks ago we had one of those nights where you hit the town and properly renew old acquaintances. We got real drunk, then real high, and exchanged war stories, except in Wyatt’s case, they literally were war stories.”
He stopped talking.
“You sure you don’t mean him harm?”
“If he’s in a jam, I can help. I’m not in the habit of making people’s lives harder than they already are, not unless they deserve it.”
“And who decides that, you?”
“Let’s say I have faith in my own judgment.”
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to rely on it too,” said Rybek. “From what Wyatt told me, and what I dug up later on the internet, Civil Affairs personnel operate in four-man teams. They go into places where the natives are hostile or where U.S. forces can’t admit to operating, and deal with threats to and from the civilian side. Wyatt was a civil recon sergeant, a technical reconnaissance expert. He was one of the operatives who assess critical infrastructure and civilian networks and figure out the crossovers with a view to disruption or protection. Frankly, my stomach tenses up just thinking about it.”
That would explain the absence of tattoos. A member of the U.S. military operating undercover in hostile territory couldn’t have permanent markings that might give him away.
“How long did he serve?” I asked.
“Four years before he moved to Civil Affairs, and another five or so after, mostly in GWOT—the Global War on Terror.”
“So when did he leave?”
“In 2017, maybe early 2018.”
“Donna Lawrence said he had a record for possession. That didn’t impede his progress in the military?”
“I doubt they gave a rat’s ass. If the army turned down everyone who’d messed up early in life, the system would collapse.”
“And what did Wyatt do after he was discharged?”
“Drifted. Spent some of his lump sum, then more of it, until soon there wasn’t much left. He started taking short-term contracts in the private sector: guarding executives, risk analysis, that kind of thing. A few of the jobs were in Latin America, places like Mexico, Colombia, parts of Peru. He’d spent time down there before, possibly early on with Civil Affairs, though he wouldn’t confirm that part. He spoke good Spanish, as far as I could tell—better than high school, which is all I have. Whatever he earned from a contract would keep him in clover for six months, after which he went looking for another payday. It suited him, living that way, or did for a while. But once forty was looming, and his bones started to hurt more, he decided it might be time to go out on a lucrative high and invest whatever he made in a bar or a store, something that would produce an income without requiring him to wear a gun. So he took a job he wouldn’t otherwise have accepted.”
Rybek licked his lips.
“I’d usually have a smoke right about now,” he said. “It’s like you and your morning coffee, but without the urge to pistol-whip someone if it’s withheld.”
“I only have a few more questions. Look upon it as delayed gratification.”
I didn’t want to push Rybek harder, but neither did I want to give him the opportunity to reconsider. Standing outside, smoking something of which Dunkin’s head office would almost certainly have disapproved, he might decide to clam up. I’d then have to work on levering him open again. I could do it, but it would be tiresome for both of us.
“Fine,” said Rybek. “Wouldn’t want you thinking I’m an addict. You have kids?”
“A daughter.”
“Bet you’ve warned her about the dangers of dope.”
“She’s a teenager, so I’ve warned her about the dangers of everything, but I couldn’t swear to how much she took in. And you?”
“A son. I was married until I wasn’t. My boy lives with his mom up in Houlton.”
“Have you warned him about the dangers of dope?”
“He’s four, so yeah.” Rybek had relaxed again. “I told him only to accept a hit from a friend.”
“Go back to the job Wyatt accepted,” I said.
“Right. As I said, Wyatt was coiled, like a spring, so I suggested that a night on the town might not be a bad idea. We ended up in Ruski’s, heads down. We weren’t too drunk, but I still wouldn’t have wanted either of us behind the wheel. Later, back at my place, we got more drunk and I broke out the good stuff. At Ruski’s, we just had a buzz on.
“It turned out that Wyatt hadn’t been sleeping so good, and the VA had given him pills for anxiety. They’d also offered him psych sessions, but he told them he wasn’t ready for therapy yet. Wyatt let them assume it was PTSD, or whatever you want to call it, but with me, he claimed it wasn’t. What he’d seen and done overseas hadn’t affected him, he said, or not in a way that couldn’t be dealt with by a couple of days spent fishing or hiking. No, this came from something more recent: his last detail down in Mexico. He’d spent a month there, October into November last year, working on the advance logistics. The main thing, for him, was that nobody would get badly hurt—on either side. He was very insistent on that: no losses, especially CIVCAS, or civilian casualties. He was tired of seeing bodies.”
“What sides were these?”
“Wyatt didn’t say, exactly. I only know he was part of a group, each member with a specialization, though only Wyatt and this other fella, Emmett Lucas, had military experience. Wyatt and Emmett grew up together in Weverton, Maryland. I come from Lovettsville, just over the Potomac in Virginia, which is how we got to know one another. We all used to smoke pot, drink beer, and chase girls down by the river on weekends.”
“Who else was in the Mexican detail?”
“Again, Wyatt wouldn’t say, but they weren’t all operating in the same location. It was like a chain or relay, with the goods being handed along, one to the other, until they were safely out of the country. Goods . That was the word he used, but, you know, fuck that.”
For the first time, Rybek looked disturbed.
“Are we talking narcotics?”
“No,” said Rybek, “we’re talking children.”