Shift: A Novel

It was only three steps to the end of the hall—carpeted, so his feet made no sound. He peeked around the corner, and there he was. Not Chandler.

Melchior.

He sat with his back to BC in a wooden chair, facing the front door. Something lay across his lap, and in the shadows BC took it for a rifle at first, then realized it was just an umbrella. It seemed to be dry, which meant that he’d been here for a while. His breathing was slow and deep, but BC knew he wasn’t sleeping. He was waiting.

He leveled his gun at Melchior’s head and cocked it.

“Don’t move.”

Melchior didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. He was so still that BC wondered if maybe he actually was sleeping, but then:

“Why, Beau-Christian Querrey. You got the drop on me. Congrats.”

“Put your hands in the air where I can see them.”

“Here?” Melchior extended his arms to either side like Christ on the cross. “Or here?” He pointed them straight up in the air like Superman.

“Get down on the floor. Keep your hands away from your body.”

“Stand up, sit down, lie down. I feel like I’m back in mass.” He stood up, and the umbrella on his lap fell to the floor. He stepped over it, his arms still raised, sank to one knee, then both, then lowered his upper body to the floor. The whole time he never looked back at BC. “From all the rigamarole, I’m betting you don’t have any handcuffs on you, do you? What are you going to do, use your tie?”

In fact, BC had been wondering just that, and, angrily, he reached for the knot and pulled it sharply.

Melchior moved at exactly the same moment. BC didn’t even know what he’d done, but suddenly the chair was flying toward him. It smacked the gun and a shot went off, slanting into the wall and blowing out a piece of plaster the size of his thigh, but BC managed to keep hold of his weapon. Melchior, meanwhile, had rolled to his knees and grabbed his umbrella and was holding it out like a sword.

BC couldn’t help but smile.

“What is that, some kind of—”

There was a pfft and something that felt like a linebacker’s helmet smashed into BC’s gut and he staggered backward. His back hit the wall behind him and the gun fell from his hand and then he fell forward onto his face.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

BC had no fewer than five addresses for Caspar. Five, and Chandler had no idea where any of them were. Thank God there was a map in BC’s rental car.

The first was way up in north Dallas. Chandler wasn’t sure what sort of dosage was in the blotter paper BC had procured from Richard Alpert, so he ripped it in half and downed the first part on the drive over; he pushed at the silent single-story ranch when he finally found it, but felt nothing. He broke in anyway. Circled around to the backyard and popped a half-rotted window frame out of its housing. His eyes only confirmed what his mind had already told him: the place was empty and, judging from the layer of dust that covered everything, long deserted.

The next address was on Marsalis Street. It was just after five when Chandler got there, but an old woman was already up, washing the breakfast dishes. Her tenants, she told him, worked first shift at the string bean factory in Fort Worth, had to be in by seven. She remembered Caspar vividly, although she knew him by another name. It was only because Chandler could see the face in her mind that he knew she was talking about the person he was looking for.

“Oh, sure, Lee Oswald. Troubled boy, what with all those Cuba pamphlets and that Communist wife. Pretty girl, though, when her face wasn’t so bruised you couldn’t see it.”

“He hit her?” Chandler couldn’t help but think of Naz.

“He’d fly into these rages,” she said matter-of-factly, as though describing the propensity of flies to work their way through a window screen. “I couldn’t tell you what brought ’em on. News stories usually. One day it was Castro, the next day the president. Then it was Khrushchev or some mob boss that that Kennedy brother was grilling on the TV. He was one of them people who have an opinion about anything and everything, but God help the poor soul who tried to make sense of ’em all.”

“Did he leave any word where he was going?”

“Well, his wife was in N’Orleans last I heard. He went after her, I guess to try to get her back.” She shuddered. “He’ll find her. He was a confused boy, but you could tell he was one of them who never stops till he gets what he wants.”

Chandler pushed then, just a little, to make sure she was telling the truth, and all of it. There was nothing else there. Caspar seemed hardly to have made an impression on her.

Beckley Street next. It was six thirty when he got there. The landlady confirmed Caspar lived there—she knew him as Lee as well, but he’d told her it was his surname and went by his initials, O.H. She told Chandler that Mr. Lee had spent last night with his wife out to Irving.

“Irving?” Chandler held out the piece of paper with the list of addresses on it. “This one here—2515 West Fifth?”

“Why, yes, I do believe—”

But Chandler had already turned and gone.

Morning traffic was starting to pick up, and it took another hour to get out there. Chandler could feel the juice trickling from his veins and knew time was running out. He was kind of surprised he still had any left actually. He’d taken the hit almost three hours ago. Massive hits seemed to jump-start his metabolism, racing through his body before leaving him exhausted, whereas small doses metered themselves out slowly, such that he was hardly aware