The Hollow Man

Bremen stood and blinked a moment, not willing to show the cop that he understood the term too readily. The cop took another step back, gestured impatiently toward the lid of the trunk, and removed his revolver from the holster.

Bremen leaned forward, moved his legs a bit farther apart, and rested his palms on the trunk. The metal was hot and he had to lift his fingers like a pianist poised to begin.

The cop stepped forward and, using only his left hand, quickly patted down Bremen’s left side. “Don’t move,” said the officer. He shifted position slightly and used the same hand to pat Bremen’s right side. Bremen could feel the presence of the loaded revolver behind him and the tension in the cop’s body, ready to spring back if Bremen whirled. Instead Bremen continued leaning on the car while the officer stepped back four paces.

“Turn around.”

The policeman still held the pistol, but it was no longer aimed directly at Bremen. “That your car back at the Interstate rest stop?”

Bremen shook his head.

“Seventy-nine Plymouth?” continued the officer. “Colorado tags MHW 751?”

Bremen shook his head again.

The officer’s thin lips twitched ever so slightly. “You don’t seem to have a billfold,” he said. “Any ID? Driver’s license?”

Thinking that another shake of the head might be considered a provocation, Bremen said, “No.”

“Why not?”

Bremen shrugged. He could see his own image in the mirrored glasses—his reed-thin form in the filthy and baggy clothes, khaki shirt torn and unbuttoned now in the heat, his chest pale and shrunken, his face as pale as his chest except for the sunburned nose, cheeks, and forehead. He had paused at that first Colorado gas station minimart to buy a razor and shaving cream, but he’d left both in the trunk of the car. His bare face looked strange to him now, like an old photograph suddenly come upon in an unlikely place.

“Where are you headed?” asked the cop.

“West,” said Bremen, taking care not to shrug again. His voice was very raw.

“Where you coming from?”

Bremen squinted against the glare. A pickup passed them in a roar and cloud of grit, giving him a second. “Salt Lake was the last place I stayed awhile.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jeremy Goldmann,” Bremen said without a pause.

“How’d you get way out here on this county road without a car?”

Bremen made a motion with his hands. “I hitched a ride on an eighteen-wheeler last night. I was sleeping this morning when the guy woke me up and said I had to get out. That was back up the road a ways.”

The officer holstered his pistol, but did not come closer. “Uh-huh. And I bet you don’t even know what county you’re in, do you, Jeremy Goldstein?”

“Goldmann,” said Bremen. He shook his head.

“And you don’t know anything about a stolen car with Colorado plates back at the Interstate rest stop, do you?”

Bremen did not bother shaking his head again.

“Well, this state has laws against vagrancy, Mr. Goldstein.”

Bremen nodded. “I’m not a vagrant, officer. I’m looking for work.”

The officer nodded slightly. “Get in the back seat.”

Through his headache and two-day hangover Bremen had been catching glimmers of the man’s thoughts. Flat certainty that this wimpy-looking beanpole was the car thief who had dumped the Colorado Plymouth back at the rest stop. Probably caught a lift to Exit 239 and hiked down this road in the dark, not knowing that the nearest town along it was another thirty-four miles. “In the back,” he said again.

Bremen sighed and got in the back. There were no door handles back there. The windows had wire mesh rather than glass in them and there was a double-mesh partition between the front seat and back. The gaps in the mesh were so small that Bremen didn’t think that he could get a finger through. It was very hot and the vinyl flooring smelled as if someone had vomited there recently.

The police officer had gotten in the front and was talking on a radio when a Toyota 4×4 that had been headed east pulled to a stop next to them. A woman leaned out her window. “Howdy, Deputy Collins. Got a live one back there?”

“How do, Miz Morgan. He’s not too lively right now.”

The woman peered at Bremen. She had a long thin face with sharp bones angling against skin more sun- beaten than the deputy’s. Her eyes were a color of gray so light as to be almost transparent. Her hair was tied back and seemed to be a dark, not-very-natural red. Bremen guessed her to be in her late forties or early fifties.

But it was not just her appearance that struck him. Bremen had allowed himself to focus on mindtouch, but there was none. The deputy’s thoughts were there … stolid, half-angry, impatient … and Bremen could even sense the neurobabble from far down the highway and even from the interstate eight miles back, but from the woman, nothing. Or, rather, where there should have been the tumbled mélange of impressions, words, and memories, there was only a loud rasping … a sort of neural white noise, as loud as an old electric fan in a small room. Bremen sensed something within or behind that curtain of mindnoise, but the thoughts were as indistinct as shifting figures on a television screen filled with electronic snow.

“Couldn’t be you’re arrestin’ the fellow come to answer my hired-man ad, now are you, Howard?” The woman’s voice was surprisingly deep and very self-assured. There was only a hint of banter in her tone.

The deputy looked up. Bremen saw the sunlight glinting on his glasses as he stared at the woman. The Toyota was higher than the patrol car and the deputy had to lift his head to look at her. “I doubt it, Miz Morgan. This’n is probably the fellow who left a stolen car out to the Interstate late last night. We’ll take him down to the station and send his prints out on the wire.”

Miz Morgan never looked at the deputy. She continued to squint at Bremen. “What’d you say his name was?”

“Goldmann,” said Bremen. “Jeremy Goldmann.”

“Shut up, goddamn you,” snapped the deputy, turning in his seat.

“By God,” said the woman, “that was the name of the man who wrote answering my ad.” Then, to Bremen: “Where’d you say you saw it? In the Denver paper?”

“Salt Lake,” said Bremen. He had not eaten in almost twenty-four hours and his head felt very light after the long walk through the darkness and desert sunrise.

“That’s right. Salt Lake.” She finally looked at the cop. “By God, Howard, you do have my hired man back there. He wrote me last week sayin’ the wages was agreeable to him and sayin’ he was coming out for an interview. Salt Lake. Jeremy Goldmann.”

The deputy swiveled in the front seat, his gunbelt creaking. The radio rasped and crackled while he thought. “You sure the man’s name was Goldmann, Miz Morgan?”

“Sure was. How could I forget a Jew name like that? It sorta tickled me, thinking of a Jewish fella working livestock.”

The deputy tapped the wire mesh. “Well, he’s still probably the one who abandoned the stolen car with Colorado plates.”

The woman edged the Toyota forward a foot so she could stare down at Bremen. “You drive a stolen car here?”

“No, ma’am,” said Bremen, wondering when he’d last called someone “ma’am.” “I hitched a ride and the fellow let me out at the last exit.”

“You tell him you were headed for the Two-M Ranch?” she asked.

Bremen hesitated only a second. “Yes’m.”

She backed the Toyota up a few feet. “Deputy, you got my hired hand back there. He was supposed to be here three days ago. Ask Sheriff Williams if I didn’t say I was waiting for a city fellow to come down to help me with the gelding.”

Howard hesitated. “I don’t doubt you told Garry, Miz Morgan. I just don’t remember nobody mentioning anybody named Goldmann coming.”