In the Company of Killers Bryan Christy (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📖

had or not. He didn’t share his personal story with anyone. They knew his name, where he’d grown up. They had Google.

“So where’d you study journalism?”

“I didn’t.”

“So where’d you learn to write?”

“My mother,” he answered, which was the truth.

Much of who he was came from her. She read to him every night as a boy. Whitman and Frost and guileless Mary Oliver. “Tell me,” Oliver asked years after his mother was gone, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” When he first read the line it was his mother’s voice he heard asking the question. His first writing was poems he composed for her. He had a gift, she said, smiling at the images he created with his pencil. “Words don’t have to flow in order,” she encouraged. “Your life doesn’t, either.” If he didn’t want to follow in the family business, he was free to leave it. His father agreed, she said.

He wasn’t about to share any of that with his colleagues any more than he would reveal that he still wrote a poem a week in the Moleskine notebook he carried in his shirt pocket, something she taught him to do. His silent prayer to her.

With little to go on, his coworkers crafted their own narrative to explain Tom Klay. Some called him Eady’s pet. They wove a story together from his muttering, his clothes, his family’s business, his interest in crime. An incident in Mexico City provided his weavers a prominent thread. Klay had turned a corner and discovered his photographer pushed up against a wall by a police officer who wanted to impose a tax on the American with the big camera. Klay had walked toward the cop, his hands held in front of his chest with the palms facing out, patting the air, gently saying, “We are on an assignment for your president.” The officer pulled his Glock .45 and pointed it at Klay’s head. In a single motion, Klay snatched the pistol, ejected the clip, jacked the slide, depressed the slide lock, and with a twist of his wrist reduced the weapon to a pipe, a spring, and a piece of black plastic. “He’s with me,” Klay said, and handed the cop his deconstructed gun.

The photographer had ended his tale on that “He’s with me” line, cementing Klay’s reputation throughout the building, turning half of the staff into open admirers, but more than a few the other way.

Eady could have corrected the rumors, could have ensured that Klay’s reputation stayed within certain boundaries. But he hadn’t, and that told Klay a good deal about who Vance Eady was, too.

Eady handed him his scotch and took a seat in a wingback chair, crossing one leg over his other knee. Eady reminded Klay of his grandfather. He had the same full white head of hair parted straight as a rifle barrel, same blue eyes and strong jaw. Even the same leathery neck skin with crosshatching that, in Klay’s grandfather, had fascinated Klay as a child. Physically, the main difference between the two men was in their smile. When he was amused, his grandfather had broken into a broad, chipped-tooth grin. Eady’s smile was always controlled. Even when he was pleased, Eady’s mouth barely opened.

“You look like death itself, Tom,” Eady said.

“I’ve been better.” Klay shifted his position, trying to get comfortable.

Eady shook his head. “It’s good to have you home.” He raised his glass. “To Ellsworth.”

Ellsworth, Klay thought.

Porfle had his sniper-spotter fantasy, and Eady had his Ellsworth. Every year, during a cocktail reception for incoming journalists, Eady stood on the roof of The Sovereign and gave a toast to Elmer Ellsworth, the young Union colonel who crossed the Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia, cut down a confederate flag for the president, and was promptly shot dead with the rebel banner in his arms—making him the first casualty of the Civil War. “Remember Ellsworth!” became a Union rallying cry.

“For a scrap of cloth,” Eady liked to say, lifting his glass, “that wasn’t.” The implication as subtle as a cannon ball: Bring me back stories. Survive if you can. I am your Lincoln.

“To Bernard,” Klay countered quietly, and drained his glass.

“Any more on the shooter, or shooters?”

Klay studied Eady, surprised. “I was hoping you might help with that.”

Eady nodded, sipped his drink. “Botha’s gone quiet?”

“Why would he do the politician?” Klay said.

Eady gestured for Klay to repeat his question.

“Why kill Lekorere?” Klay asked. “He wasn’t a threat.”

Eady shrugged. “Wrong place, wrong time. Shooters took your vehicle to get away. For some reason Lekorere was in it. That was a mistake.” Eady repeated his question. “Have you heard more on Botha?”

Klay’s mind was elsewhere. He was thinking about Bernard on his hands and knees outside his mother’s hut searching for his rungu. Klay teasing him for losing his club again. “You should put a string on it.” Bernard smiling his joy-filled smile, leading Klay on a hike, his gold belt jingling. “This blue flower tells us rain is coming. This is the candelabra tree. The sap will blind you. The only cure is to wash your eye out with blood.” Klay, bandaged, standing beside Bernard’s mother as she poured milk on her son’s grave.

“Tom?”

“I don’t know, Vance,” Klay said. “He texted me while I was in the hospital.”

“Texted you?”

Klay nodded. “‘Hope your food’s worse than mine,’ it said. ‘Get well soon. Hahaha.’”

“‘Hahaha,’” Eady echoed, looking quizzically at Klay. “How do you know it was Botha?”

“I don’t know it. But he signed it. ‘Ras Botha.’”

Eady shook his head. “The Octopus, you called him, right? He’s a murderer, Tom. We knew that before, but now you know it firsthand. That changes things, I’d say.”

“There was something else on that plateau,” Klay said. “Something just before the shot . . .”

“I know. Bernard. Pity. But you’re a hero, Tom. Your actions saved the rest of—”

“No, something else. It’s on the edge of my memory. I can’t quite get it.”

“Something else?” Eady looked at Klay thoughtfully for a moment. He