About Henry Fellows (Chapter Four Continues)

Post 84:

Episode Eleven:

On Killing and Innocence: The Chronicles of Henry Fellows

Chapter Four: Travelodge (Continued)

            “Floyd told me you did your thing again today.”

            “The police station thing?"

            “Yeah, Henry. That’s the one.”

            “Well, I have to do something. That’s five times now. I reach for the gallows and someone goes out of their way to let me know they’re watching.”

            “Are you any closer to finding out who they are?” she asks. There’s something in her voice, maybe skepticism. It’s hard to get a read. She’s a smart, complicated woman. I imagine her sitting at her big mahogany desk in her big office building, surrounded by a billion books and a billion other things she’d rather be doing.

            “Well,” I say, turning on my side to examine the wallets of the two thugs from the BMW. “Do we still have the confidential thing going on?”

            “I’m your lawyer. To this day. Though you could pay me once in a while. It might serve to strengthen what I know is already a tight and heartfelt bond.”

            “Cute. So—I killed two guys today.”

            There’s a pause. The kind of pause you expect when you’ve just told someone you killed two guys.

            “Perfect. Any reason?”

            “Yeah. They were coming at me with guns. Frigging mopes knew who I was.”

            “How can that be?”

            “What have I been telling you? Someone’s playing me, but nobody wants to listen. Guess it takes actual gunplay to convince you.” More silence on the other end of the line. “Do you believe I’m innocent, or am I just talking to a lawyer here?”

            She storms back. “I’ve always believed. You know that. Do you think I would’ve—never mind. Do you still believe?”

            I reach for the pills stashed in my right pants pocket. Three times a day for these. Her question has me squirming; why she asked it, the fact that she needed to, that the way I am leads her inexorably to the fact that she needs to.

            “I believe. But I don’t like having to kill guys. Even ones who deserve it. Makes me think of what I did, what I might have done.”

            “Stop it. Enough with the soldier’s remorse. I get it, but there’s no shame in serving, Hank. You put your life on the line for the country.”

            She doesn’t know all the things I did for my country.

            “Nina, it doesn’t make sense.” I pause to do a cursory inspection of the thugs’ identification and papers and tell straightaway that they’re fake. My fake face makes a real smirk.

            “I was getting ready to say that,” she says. “But which part? There’s a lot going on here.”

            “How long since I escaped?”

            “Over a year.”

            “Right. Fifteen months. Most of that time, nothing. Not a guy following me on the street, not a car tailing me, not a bug in my hotel room.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Yet the last few months, every time I think about turning myself in, boom, they blast it out over everywhere. Radio, TV, all of a sudden I’m a murderous phoenix rising from the ashes to shower your local neighborhood with blood.”

            “Decent summation. I get it.” Nina’s always saying words like summation in real life. She’s like a carpenter who brings a hammer to a friend’s house on the off chance anything needs to be nailed down. Far as habits go, it’s half annoying and half adorable. If she wasn’t a gorgeous, professional woman, it’d probably be 80/20 on the annoying side.