The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (37 page)

Rem had come into money in his last year through the sale of land and the settlement of a dispute, and he had decided, with Cathy’s agreement, that the money would be entrusted to a Quaker fund to support veterans returning from combat.

Rem Gunnersen’s wake was held in his house on the night before the funeral. As per his instructions, Cathy opened the casket and undressed him, and he was buried naked in a coffin of compressed cardboard, along with a handwritten note stating that while he’d tried his level best to protect the people under his care, some had come to harm, and while he could not rectify these mistakes he asked to be received with forgiveness.

Chimeno (Spider) returned to Iraq nine months after his time at Camp Liberty and was killed in a direct strike. His remains were flown back to Fort Dover, repatriated, and taken directly to his hometown, Peoria, Illinois, to his parents’ farm. The attack occurred in daylight and was the first killing that year. As the helicopter cleared the bulk of the abandoned Ministry of Oil in Amrah City the pilot turned to Spider to say that one day all this would be automatic. An ops team on the other side of the world would feed in every known piece of information about a suspect, every god-damned thing, their taste in women, shoes, the side of the bed they slept on, and predictions would be made about where this person would most likely be at any given time. They’d know, before it even occurred to the target, where they wanted to go that day. With this information they would take out insurgents without ever being present. No armies. Computers and drones. They’d show it on the news, like they showed the Scuds in Libya dropping onto bunkers, targets braced with digital sights. Unseen, inside the building, lay a simple IED; triggered by the ’copter’s down-thrust it blew a funnel of debris between the floors.

On the day of his funeral the Department of Defense released a video of the incident. After it was hit, the helicopter, an HH-60, spun into the side of the building to fold into the concrete honeycomb with a cold familiarity, pieces of it ricocheting out and down.

*

Steven (christened Stefan) Kiprowski was the first of the group to die at the government offices in Amrah City.

Kiprowski, Chimeno, Pakosta, Samuels, Watts, Clark, and Hernandez were Rem Gunnersen’s men for six weeks; known as Unit 7, the men were handpicked to work at the burn pits at Camp Liberty in the southern desert of Al-Muthanna.

While the men did not know each other, they’d passed the day in a canal-side bar drinking shots and chatting with ease, and a game, whatever the premise, would add purpose to the late afternoon.

Rem had two stories in mind before he’d properly considered the idea. When he did consider it, he realized that he’d chosen these days not because they were his worst, but because they worked as parentheses either side of a year he wished to set behind him.

On the first bad day (story one), his dog, Nut, a dirty white insecure Staffordshire bull terrier, went missing.

On the second (story two), a man he’d worked with kidnapped another man, then drove halfway across the country with him in the boot of his car.

The thing is, Rem explained, he’d almost certainly kidnapped the wrong man.

If the Norwegian had asked for one story Rem would have chosen the first.

Nut slept in the same room as Rem and his wife. The dog suffered gas (no diet would cure it), and being timid the creature didn’t like surprises. He ignored other dogs; was never heard to bark or growl; sat between people as they talked and appeared to understand their conversations.

Rem loved the routine. The early walks, the late walks. The lake-front at Rogers Park dusted with mist. How Nut waited to be told to run. How the dog loved water. How, every year, he rediscovered ice. Nut doted on Rem and Cathy, walked jauntily in their company, shone with affection, would lean against a door if he was shut out of a room,
just to be close
.

Nut disappeared before Rem left for Iraq, and Rem later realized that if the dog hadn’t vanished, he would have stayed in Illinois. Nuts’ needs and routines set a perimeter they never questioned; without that perimeter, their horizons automatically broadened.

✩

Rem set his morning in order. First the Robinsons, then the Rosens, the Colemans, then Matt.

He found Martin Robinson on the driveway of his home in Lake Forest. The man leaving, car pointed downhill, the weather turning from indeterminate drizzle to a harder, full-on rain. Rem ran from his car with his jacket pulled over his head and leaned through the passenger window, and Robinson pushed Rem’s head back and kept his hand out for the money.

As the car drove away Rem looked back to the house. He never envied people money, seldom felt bruised at others’ entitlement and excess, even now, handing over cash on a broad driveway curved to give a last long view of the lake, the landscaped garden, treeless until the incline, the flat-roofed house, the lap pool, the edge of a Chihuly chandelier, those slab windows reflecting a sombre two-tone view. Grey lake. Grey sky. These people didn’t need money, not in the same way Rem needed money.

The cleaners along these lake-front houses arrived in vans labelled
Maintenance Technician
. The trash collectors –
Waste Managers
. Decorators –
Design Consultants
.

Two thousand. Four thousand. Five thousand.

Twenty minutes later Rem met with Martin and Samantha Rosen in their house with its Tudor frontage. Said he wouldn’t come in because he was wet, and thought it kind when Samantha Rosen returned with a towel, asked if he wanted a coffee, and behaved with less embarrassment than her husband. Rem left the money on the kitchen counter, and didn’t look at the package as he sipped the coffee and calculated the cost of the appliances. Those cabinets are engineered and handcrafted, you can’t slam the doors, even if you kick them they slide home with a sigh.

It wasn’t green they’d wanted but
chartreuse
. Rem wasn’t a house-painter, but an
interior decorator
. The money he brought wasn’t anything other than
satisfaction, under the circumstances
.

At the Colemans’, Rem spoke with a housekeeper who said that Marie Coleman had just left, and Rem wondered what was going on. They have these people in their houses, coming and going, and yet they figured the problem came from some sticky decorator. Cathy had a point, he shouldn’t be so easy to ride. A Yorkshire terrier, small even for the breed, scuttled for the door, and the housekeeper held it back with her foot and called it
Lucy
. Andy Coleman – nicknamed ‘turd-cutter’ by either Matt or Mike for his tight mouth and pudgy cheeks – worked for the Lake View office of the Chief of Police. A portrait of the man and wife, black-and-white head shots, mounted on the wood panelling.

Rem held on to the money; while he didn’t want to return, he didn’t trust leaving an envelope containing this much cash. The Colemans held the deepest grievance.
The ring was an heirloom piece.
The housekeeper recognized the logo on Rem’s car and told him: You need to speak with the Stahls.

Before he reached Chicago, Rem received two calls from Andy Coleman. Both abusive. The first call nothing but an indignant sulk: ‘You said you’d be here. We gave you a specific time. We had an agreement.’

The second message was less constrained and the man shouted. ‘How would you feel if someone broke into your home? How would that feel, Gunnersen? Hey? You tell me? How about I come to your home and take something of yours? How will that feel?’

Rem wanted to tell him to go to his apartment, no worries, help himself to whatever he wanted. Instead he managed to sound reasonable, even made himself smile so his voice would carry some colour.

‘Sorry to miss you. There’s a misunderstanding. I came by earlier but you weren’t there. I didn’t want to leave anything as the house didn’t look secure. Let me know when you’re about. I can come back tomorrow. Mornings aren’t a problem.’

The last visit promised to be the most difficult, and Rem waited a long time in the car, and smoked despite his sore throat.
You need to speak to the Stahls
. The point of the exercise already undermined. If Rem was paying people to keep their mouths shut he wouldn’t need to speak with the Stahls, because the Stahls wouldn’t know. Just as some slack-mouthed housekeeper shouldn’t know either.

Nobody but the Robinsons and the Rosens had any business with him. These were the people named by Matt. The only two. The Colemans were included for containment.

Cissie let him in, wrong-footed him with a kiss on the cheek, said breezily that Matt was in the back and how about a coffee? Rem couldn’t calculate if this was bravado, because they’d known each other for so long – was she supposed to answer the door in sackcloth? Weep? Cower? What did he expect? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Even so, her cheeriness made him sore.

No such breeziness from Matt. Sequestered on a dark internal porch, Matt wiped his hands down his legs but didn’t offer to shake hands. His expression fixed in a gawp, a slap-red rash ran up his neck. He moved in slow counterpoise to Rem, a greasy movement, distrustful to the core.

Rem laid out the papers for the loan agreement, the book of payment slips, a separate sheet listing the names and amounts he’d paid. Payments that counted into thousands of dollars. He outlined them one at a time, but didn’t mention the Stahls.

While Rem spoke Matt hastily gathered the papers and looked to the door, and Rem guessed that Cissie knew nothing, had no idea.

When he asked, Matt drew a small in-breath that sounded like incredulity, perhaps even scorn. ‘I’ll pay every cent back. As long as I have work I can pay you.’

Rem closed his eyes, quarried for an explanation.

‘There isn’t any work. No one wants to hire us, Matt. We’re done.’ Rem let the fact sit before venturing. ‘I have to explain the situation to Mike and the others. I have to find reasons why.’ Rem stood, hands to his knees, a simple, pneumatic movement. ‘You pay in each month. That’s all you need to do. We don’t need to be in contact otherwise.’

Cissie busied herself in the kitchen as he left. No coffee being made, instead it looked like a supper of pasta and eggs and ham and sour cream. Rem had left his cigarettes on the table, had set them down when he’d taken out the papers. He didn’t want to return for them, didn’t want them at all.

Rem arrived home to find the lobby unlocked, the mail picked up, which meant that Cathy was home – although she never left the door open, this was his habit, and his problem when people came in and fouled in the hallway. At the top of the stairs he found the outer, heavy warehouse door, metal-sheathed, open. The second apartment door also open. No welcoming dog. No Cathy either.

He searched the neighbourhood with the leash wrapped about his knuckles, hopeful at every corner and block-long view that Nut would be there, shivering – because this is what he did when he was lost, he shivered, he cowered, he whimpered. This was Coleman’s doing. No doubt. Rem couldn’t imagine anything more provocative than breaking into a house and letting a dog out on the street.

✩

Unlike Kuwait City, Amrah City had no central business zone, and only one building higher than four storeys, the Ministry of Oil, a honey-coloured, hive-like building of twenty-five storeys, which could be seen some distance from the city. Rem looked for similarities to other cities, but three factors – the vast plane of squat oblong houses, the pounding heat, and how disturbingly vacant the city appeared – dominated any familiar elements.

Amrah City Section Base (aka: ACSB, The Station) lay four miles from the Regional Government Office, Southern-CIPA. Pinched between Shi’a and Sunni districts, the former light-industrial complex had once housed a packing plant, a cannery, a coach station, and an ice factory. The buildings wore scars from the conflict, and there was evidence that the Palace Guard had used the complex as a garrison. The compound was barely adequate in scale and location, and housed nearly twelve hundred non-Iraqi foreign nationals, Fobbits, who bedded down in stacked container units – alongside a further fifteen hundred Americans and other allies, although this number declined by the day. The recent increase in security breaches made the post less attractive for contractors who had no military experience. Protected by a fortified outer wall, Section Base housed a cinema, a sports hall, stores, and a PX, and in the courtyard a row of cabins, referred to as ‘the ovens’. The electricity seldom ran longer than four hours, so the compound rang to the thrum of generators.

The job fell short of expectation on the first day. Rem, assigned to Unit 409, was told that he couldn’t stay inside the compound, as ACSB was classified as
home territory
. If he wanted the Strategic Placement Bonus he’d have to leave the compound every day.

Rem built walls to repel and redirect blasts: walls to stop cars, mortars, rockets, objects propelled with great force and speed; walls to stopper windows, doorways, shop-fronts either side of the new highways; walls to segregate Sunni from Shi’a. The project involved the fortification of the north, south, and western routes into the city – routes which cut the city into separate zones.

For the first week the crews worked a night shift (four nights on, one off), and laboured under arc-lamps in vacant neighbourhoods which reminded Rem of the Southside of Chicago. On the midday news, by satellite, he saw the ramps he’d built, the road divisions and blast walls, the routes broad enough to carry troops and convoys. Unlike Baghdad, Amrah City would have no Blue or Red Zones. If the old city didn’t work they would sweep it aside and build a new one in its place. The neighbourhoods straddling the main routes were razed in a one-block strip either side of the highway. Houses, hotels, and businesses were demolished, along with every facility, school, surgery, or market which might house any kind of crowd, and Rem became used to seeing the city through a pale haze of dust.