Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) (5 page)

10 miles outside our nation’s capital, I spotted a Hilton Ramada Holiday Inn whatever-the-fuck generic hotel.

I pulled off the I-95, parked in the lot and headed for the entrance.

I went in, power-walked through the lobby and came right back out the back door – all so I could walk back around the front to where I had originally parked.

And there in the parking lot, I saw, as I expected I would, a familiar blue Toyota cautiously coming to a stop a few spaces away from my new rental. I waited to see who was going to get out of it.

And holy fuck if it wasn’t a damn teenager.

The kid was wearing expensive ripped jeans and t-shirt, trying to look street for too much money. He was skinny, furtive and was holding a heavy-duty X-ACTO knife in his left hand as he approached my shiny new rental car. But I was able to get right behind him before he got too far. I knew this was an amateur because he never felt me coming.

“Hold it, Billy the Kid. You don’t want me to use what’s sticking in your back.”

What was sticking in his back was the end of the tire wrench from the trunk of the rental. But he didn’t know that.

He stopped immediately and put up his hands. Poor little fucker was shaking. Finally, someone else besides me was in the damn principal’s office and I got to be the damn principal.

“Drop the knife,” I barked like a tough guy. I’m up to it when there’s no chance of me getting hurt.

He dropped the knife. I picked it up.

“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry for the surprise, but I didn’t feel like wasting another hour forty-five today, it’s already starting to get dark. Now turn around.”

He did. I showed him the tire wrench. His eyes went wide. I was suddenly a magical trickster. Maybe I would turn him into a frog.

“What’s this all about?” I asked.

He looked glumly at the ground. But not before I noticed the family resemblance.

“Your mother’s name Angela?”

No response. Which was a response.

“Well, go home and tell Mommy you didn’t scare me off. And maybe have her give me a call.”

He stood there not knowing what to do. I pointed the tire iron at him.

“Bang.”

He skedaddled away, back to the blue Toyota, which he jumped into just as fast as he could, stumbling and almost falling on his face on the front seat. Then he drove off with a loud squeal, leaving a little of the tire tread behind in the parking space.

I had the feeling he was going to be up all night on Hulu watching old
Family Guy
episodes trying to calm himself down.

Five more miles up the interstate, I checked in under a phony name at a different Hilton Ramada Holiday Inn and took my luggage, by which I mean the Banana Republic shopping bags, up to my room, headed straight for the bathroom, and finally took the shit that had been trying to fight its way out of my ass for the past three hours.

I felt about twenty pounds lighter, and thought about maybe taking a shower and watching some garbage TV to relax. But who was I kidding - I knew I couldn’t relax. So far, everybody I had been in contact with today was deeply unhappy - and I knew I needed to add one more name to this little anti-party.

An hour later, Howard threw open his front door. He was in his pajamas. I didn’t figure him for a pajama guy, I figured him for a boxers and t-shirt guy. I’m usually right about these things, so I was momentarily taken off guard.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, logically enough.

“I figured if I wasn’t going to sleep tonight, neither should you.”

Howard and his lovely wife Janet lived in the Palisades, a nice neighborhood near the Potomac River and the Georgetown campus – another Washington elite community. They weren’t in the nicest part of this nice neighborhood, but where they were didn’t suck either.

I looked Howard over a moment, since I hadn’t seen him in person in a few years. He had always had the face of a rat, now he had a shaved head on top of that, so that he resembled an albino lizard. All the old guys shaved their heads now, cutting their losses once their hairlines retreated to the back of their skulls. It almost made me miss my dad’s comb-over. Me, I still had most of my hair, and it was still the same brown color as it was when I was a kid. The difference was it no longer matched up with the wrinkles in my face. It was starting to look like a wig or a dye job, proving that you got punished even for the things that went right.

“How the hell did you find out where I lived?” Howard asked.

“Do you have any idea what I do for a living?” I asked.

He frowned and ushered me in. I saw Janet’s bathrobed back beating a hasty retreat into the kitchen. I knew she was still friends with my ex and I knew she wanted nothing to do with me.

“Do you know what time it is?” Howard asked with a whine as he plopped down on the sofa.

I pointed to my nice new silver watch and nodded. “Give me five minutes and a drink and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I don’t stock Jack.”

“How about the closest thing?”

He disappeared again as my phone vibrated. My regular phone, not the Mr. Barry Filer phone, which, thankfully, had stayed silent ever since he gave it to me. I took my phone out, saw the caller ID and answered the phone.

“How’s your boy?”

“How did you know?” Angela Davidson asked with some surprise.

“He has your nose.”

She sighed.

“You didn’t have to scare him like that.”

“Don’t worry, the tire wrench wasn’t loaded.”

She wasn’t laughing at my jokes. Instead, she went on to tell me, with too many words and at too fast a speed, that it was her idea, she had just sent the kid to scare me off. I told her she shouldn’t have put him in that situation if he didn’t know how to pull it off, she could have gotten the boy killed if I was actually dangerous. She seemed to accept the fact that I wasn’t dangerous a little too readily for my taste.

“Look,” she said in almost a whisper as Howard returned with a glass of something, “Just take the money, give my father a good story about how you couldn’t find anything, or better yet, say you found out my brother really is dead so he’ll forget this whole mess.”

“You’re repeating yourself. And unless you know something I don’t, I’m assuming that’s exactly what will happen. Which makes me wonder, if there’s nothing else to this, why would you send your son out to slash my tires?”

“I told you, I don’t want my father to be embarrassed.”

“Is that your only kid?”

“Jeremy. Yes. He’s a good kid. Just turned eighteen.”

Howard rattled the ice in my drink, indicating extreme impatience. I took it from him. Probably Jim Beam or some shit like that.

“Well, I should go. I’m with someone and they think this is rude.”

“Who are you with?” she asked sharply.

“It’s not another woman, so don’t be jealous.”

Sometimes I think I haven’t done my job if the person isn’t still talking when I hang up the phone. She was still talking, but I was done with Davidsons for the night.

I put away my phone, sipped the drink and sat down in a chair. Howard sat back down on the sofa and asked who had been on the phone.

“The General’s daughter.”

He paused a little too long. I wanted a tell and I might have gotten one.

“The General? What General?”

“So you don’t know the particulars of my assignment?”

“Was I the one who gave it to you?”

“No, that was Mr. Barry Filer.”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“I was hoping you’d know. Maybe this rings a bell - his eyes gravitate to different magnetic poles.”

“Cross-eyed?”

“More at cross purposes. Anyway, I googled this guy’s name and came up with nothing, except an accountant in Iowa and an insurance agent in Washington state.”

“I have no clue who you’re talking about.”

“Then here’s to the clueless.”

I raised my glass to the toast position and then took a big long sip of whatever whiskey I had been supplied with, while Howard stared at me with a dismal expression.

“You’re pathetic. You come storming over here in the middle of the night to blame me for everything and I had not one fucking thing to do with whatever you’re in the middle of. I don’t know any General, I don’t know Barry Miller…”

“Filer.”

“I don’t know anything, including why you’re here and not in New York on that godforsaken island. I’m going to go get a fucking drink myself.”

He went into the kitchen, where Janet still was. There were a bunch of urgent whispered words that were as loud as they could be and still be considered whispers.

“Hi, Janet,” I yelled merrily just to piss her off a little more.

She returned fire – and she was definitely packing more heat than me.

“Hel-LO, Max!  While you’re in town, you should stop by and visit Allison and Edgar. They’re just two streets over. We see them all the time.”

Allison my ex-wife and Edgar the guy she married after me. Both with the Agency. Thanks for bringing that up.

“Oh,” she added, just to really fuck me in the ass, “And Lorie’s still living with them, if you didn’t know.”

I recovered from that psychic punch to the gut and mumbled, “Last I checked, none of them were interested in talking to me.” Then I took another big gulp of the brown stuff to further self-medicate. There were more words in the kitchen that I couldn’t make out, not that I really wanted to, then Howard re-emerged, looking wounded and without a drink.

“Everything all right?”

“Peachy,” came his answer. Then he gave me a deeper look. “What the fuck are you doing with yourself? You’re getting too old for this, you know. Then what? I don’t imagine that you have anything saved up for your golden years.”

“You and your wife can visit all the money I have. It’s just two streets over, according to her.”

Howard glanced nervously at the kitchen.

“Don’t start anything,” he said quietly.

“I didn’t. Anyway, don’t worry about me. Did you know half of all Americans don’t have any money saved for their retirement? I saw it in the Times the other day.”

“Great. You’ll have people to talk to at the homeless shelter.” He immediately felt bad. “I’m sorry, man.”

I stared him down for a few moments.

“What?”

“You know something.”

He blinked uncomfortably.

“Cut the shit, Max. I gave them your name is all. They came to me looking for the name of a guy who had done a job some time ago. I figured out it was you, I gave them your name and contact info, that’s it. They said don’t talk to anybody about this. Can I go to bed now?”

I sighed and looked away.

“I’m in over my fucking head, Howard. You’re right, I am too old for this shit.”

“So maybe think about quitting this assignment.”

“I’ve never done that.”

“This would be a good time to start. Why not?”

My turn in the hot seat. Howard frowned.

“You need the fucking money, don’t you?”

“It’s been pretty quiet this year,” I offered. “And Mr. Barry Filer pays well.”

“You gotta come up with a Plan B, my friend.”

I took another sip, while Howard worked up the nerve to give me some more advice.

“Look, man,” he said softly, “You should talk to Allison while you’re here. At least clean that mess up.”

“I didn’t make that mess, despite the other opinions out there.” I glared at the kitchen accusingly, then drained my glass. Then I stood up and handed it back to him. He seemed startled that I was actually going to let him go back to bed.

“Hey, you can hang out a couple minutes. It’s cool.”

I saw Janet lurking in the kitchen shadows and said, “I don’t think it is, Howard.”

He got to his feet. “How long you in town?”

“Leaving first thing tomorrow.”

Things hung between us. We had known each other too long.

“You should have never left the Agency, man.”

“You know I didn’t really have a choice.”

“Max, you’re a good guy. It’s time to move on and get a life. You still got time.”

“You can counsel me on my future after I get done with this. I’ll either end up famous or dead.”

He looked like he was going to cry. He took my arm and walked me to the door.

“Look, you need anything, you know where I am.”

Then the motherfucker hugged me.

Well, that was fun.

It was Monday morning, mid-morning actually, and I had spent more time drinking than sleeping the previous night. On my way home from Howard’s, I had found a place on the D.C. side where I could procure a small bottle of Jack. I paid for that myself, because the drinking had nothing to do with the job, it had to do with the ghosts that always waited for me around these parts. The ghosts of my marriage, my kids, my parents and…well, the one ghost that nobody talked about, but nobody could forget.

I woke up with a splitting headache and a determination to stave off the spooks and get back on track with what I was supposed to be doing. Just because Howard’s wife insisted on keeping the bad old days alive didn’t mean I had to participate. I had spent a lot of years burying that shit in the basement of my subconscious and I wasn’t about to get it out of storage at this point.

I had something to keep me busy so I worked at refocusing. That process began with calling the front desk and asking if I could keep the room another night. They were agreeable. I wouldn’t be leaving today because, now that the General had actually told me what I was after, I needed to do the research I would have done before I left Roosevelt Island, had I had any fucking clue what I needed to be researching. I never liked walking into situations blindfolded - and that’s all I had been doing since I met up with Mr. Barry Filer.

I found a Best Buy nearby, where, on a Monday morning, there were a lot more blue-shirted salespeople than customers, not to mention about eight billion more DVDs than the American people were inclined to buy at this point in the digital revolution. I was pleased to see the entire run of
Mr. Ed
had finally earned its own boxed set, but I had to wonder when
Hazel
would have her day. Maybe there would be no hooray for her after all.

After a brief high-level consultation with an employee who looked like he had never been laid and maybe never would be, I bought an economy-priced Chromebook – well, my new credit card did, anyway.  Then I came back to my room, which had the “Do Not Disturb” sign still hanging on the doorknob. It was still hanging there when I unlocked the door and went in.  My experience has always been that the housekeeping people always show up just when you don’t want them to. Besides, I’m neat for a guy my age. I don’t really need cleaning up after.

I ordered up a club sandwich, no mayo, from room service and hooked up my new purchase to the hotel Wi-Fi. And I tried to find what I could about First Lieutenant Robert Davidson and his tragic death at the age of 32, half a world away.

Of course I knew going in that I would be looking at the “official” story. Back in 2005, most “war journalism” was a lot more like reprinted press releases than actual reporting. This was no exception. Robert Davidson was a patriot and a hero. This was a horrible tragedy for America and his father. He died for his country and we had to keep fighting idiotic wars to justify his sacrifice.

I read some more. About how Robbie signed up with the Army right out of high school and put himself in Ranger School, working towards Special Ops status, rather than going the straight officer route at West Point as his dad had.  That decision maybe provided the contours of the tension between father and son that the General alluded to during our conversation; the son bought into Bush and Cheney’s disastrous left turn into Iraq in 2004 and the father knew it was folly. Still, Robert Davidson had apparently served valiantly both in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, where he was killed.

Assuming he was.

Again, this was the “official” story. Back then, there were a lot of them. Jessica Lynch had been a scrappy little hero, Rambo with a menstrual cycle – until she blew the whistle on the military’s myth-making bullshit. Then there was the really tragic tale of Specialist Pat Tillman in the Army Rangers. He gave up an NFL contract to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan – which, to Americans, was like giving up heaven for hell. When he was killed in combat overseas, he was lionized as the ultimate warrior. Except it turned out he wasn’t killed in combat – he was killed by his own unit’s weapons and the evidence pointed to the possibility that the other guys offed him on purpose for God knows what-the-hell reason.

So I wasn’t about to just accept the media coverage of Robert Davidson’s demise. The more I read about what happened, the more questions popped up in my head.  

First of all, everyone in his outfit all mouthed the right platitudes to the press about how wonderful Davidson was, how brave he was, how his father should be proud of how he died, the usual – but all their talk felt like the kind of generic blurbs you’d hear at a funeral from a priest who had never met the deceased in his life. They said nothing personal and nothing to indicate any of them had any sort of close bond with him. There was something missing – something that would have indicated they might have actually liked the guy or even had known him at all.

Second of all, and this was a big one, no one in his outfit
saw
him go down.

It was true. He was accompanied by no other military personnel when he suddenly took a couple of bullets from an Afghan rebel.

The only people he was with – were from Dark Sky.

Most people knew about Blackwater, the controversial American “private security” company that received about a billion in government contracts to help police Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars. They ended up being accused of negligence, racial discrimination, prostitution, wrongful death, murder of innocent civilians, and, on the fun side, the smuggling of weapons into Iraq in dog food containers. Of further interest was the fact that several family members of contractors who worked for Blackwater and ended up dead sued the company for details of those deaths – which Blackwater refused to provide. The company was finally kicked out of Iraq in 2009 by the new Obama administration and had all their military contracts with the U.S. cancelled. After that, with lawsuits swirling around their corporate heads, they changed their name in a last-ditch attempt to stay in business - because that’s always a great solution to the problem of being a bunch of fucking murderous dicks.

But Dark Sky? Nobody knew what the hell they had been up to overseas. The overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t even know they existed.

While Blackwater mostly protected State Department officials, Dark Sky’s Middle East role was a lot more nebulous – and dubious.  There were rumors they had close ties to America’s favorite hit squad, Seal Team Six and other high-level clandestine Special Ops personnel. At the Agency, I heard rumblings that they were given license to do whatever they needed to get the job done, to the point where somebody high-up finally pulled the plug on their overseas ops around the same time Blackwater found itself flushed down the government toilet. I didn’t know exactly what kinds of things they did wrong, but word was they made Blackwater’s sins look positively forgivable. But they were buttoned-up tighter than Blackwater – there were no public scandals or lawsuits dragging their name into the media spotlight. As a matter of fact, the government was still funding their existence.

So - what was Robert Davidson doing with them?

The story was he went ahead alone with them to scout out some rebel territory, leaving his men behind - when the unexpected rebel attack happened. Again, he was the only casualty and no eyewitnesses ever came forward to say exactly what happened.  There were no quotes from Dark Sky personnel in the newspapers about the incident, just an official statement from the company expressing their remorse. Their side, as always, was all buttoned up nice and tight.

The reporting was all perfectly believable – and because it was the General’s son, there was an air of respectful restraint. So everybody expressed their sadness for a few moments and the world went on. This wouldn’t be a Jessica Lynch or a Pat Tillman situation. No, this episode lacked any kind of family pushback or contradictory evidence – so it would be swallowed whole and digested without discomfort by all of America. 

It made me realize why Davidson liked John Ford films. This was a movie director who was fond of ripping apart glorious national myth-making, even as he celebrated the preservation of the myths. In
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
, a character famously says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” and that was Davidson’s credo too. The General would never blow the whistle on his fellow soldiers – it was good for the country to perpetuate patriotic myths. No, he would only curse out the government privately because it wouldn’t provide the troops with a “pure” mission.

And that’s why he wanted to send me out to handle this situation quietly and under the radar. If his son was still alive, he wanted to understand the situation before he took any official action.

But if Robert Davidson was still alive – where was he and what was he doing? My thoughts were going around in circles. I still didn’t know enough to even try and figure out that angle. So, to kill time, I checked out a few online gambling sites, wondering if I could get away with using my brand new credit card to win a million or two at virtual poker.

I was just recalling how bad a poker player I was when my iPhone started vibrating.

I picked it up off the desk where it lay beside the Chromebook, recognized the Caller ID again, and answered.

“Let me guess. You want to know where my car is, so your kid can come slash the tires again.”

“I hope you’re amused inside your own head, because those are the only laughs you’re going to get.”

Angela, as usual, wasn’t in a joking mood.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Davidson?”

“Where are you? Are you still in town?”

“Not in your town. I’m up the road, near D.C.”

Pause.

“Can I come see you?”

I checked my nice new silver watch. 4:30.

“Well…I hate to eat alone.”

“Tell me where to meet you.”

Was I crazy for inviting Angela Davidson to dinner after she sent her kid out to sabotage my rental?  No. I needed all the information I could get and I knew there were probably a few details only she could provide. After all, this was her younger brother – she would know what he was all about.

I was still a little shaky from the bender the night before when I pulled my rental up to the D.C. hotspot where I asked her to meet me. I didn’t want her anywhere near my hotel, because I didn’t want to become the victim of any more of her family’s mischief. I ended up getting to the place a couple of minutes late – and I don’t think she was too ecstatic about my tardiness. She was actually looking pretty hot in a small black skirt and close-fitting top as she leaned on her Mercedes and glared at the boarded-up graffiti-ridden windows that bore the address I had given her.

Whoops.

I parked across the street and walked over to her.

“This must be a very exclusive place,” she said, her eyes throwing a few poisoned daggers my way. “So exclusive it doesn’t have windows. Must be some pretty important people in there. They
really
don’t want to be seen.”

I looked the façade up and down and sighed.

“Pancho’s Tacos. The best bad Mexican food in town. What the hell.”

“The best
bad
Mexican food?” she said in disbelief as she threw her head in Pancho’s direction.

“Cheesy and greasy,” I said, still staring at the outline of “Pancho’s” left behind on the top of the front wall from where the letters were removed. “Guaranteed to clean out your system in an hour.”

“Well, my system’s fine, thank you. So let’s go where I like to eat. Leave your car, I’ll drive.”

“Your kid going to come cut the brake lines this time?”

More daggers.

Where she liked to eat was, as expected, expensive and jam-packed with Washington movers and shakers – and sadly devoid of greasy tacos. This was a five-star restaurant that felt as if it needed a few extra in recognition of its super-elevated status – if you threw a bread roll in any direction, you were bound to hit a cable news pundit smack in the kisser.

My idea had been to stay as incognito as possible and here she was getting us a table at a place where everybody cared less about the food and more about the other people that were eating there. A Clinton or a Bush wouldn’t have been out of place, which meant a Davidson was more than welcome without a reservation. We were a real Lady and the Tramp combo, since I was dressed for Pancho’s and she was for whatever you still dressed for these days. Luckily, I was at least wearing my brand new Banana Republic jeans – and of course, my nice new silver watch, which quickly caught her eye.

“Nice watch,” she said, looking over the top of her menu. “Did you just get that? I don’t remember you wearing that when you were at the house.”

“You’re observant.”

Her approval faded as she looked me in the eyes.

“You still look pale. Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No, I should’ve seen less whiskey last night.”

“Hmmm,” she said, “Again with the whiskey. Do you perhaps need to go to a meeting?”

“I’m not an alcoholic, but thanks for asking. No, last night was a special occasion. Call it a return to the scene of the crime.”