The Missing Man

By Andrew White

Gone Girl meets The Big Sleep: "Flowing prose has the sense of murderous urgency, reminiscent that of classical hard-boiled mysteries."

For the longest time, nobody even realized that Richard Barnes had joined the ranks of the 2,000 people who go missing each day in the United States.

It is the middle of yet another cloud-free, rain-free, pseudo-idyllic summer in Los Angeles. It’s the heart of the modern depression and NPR is playing interviews with those affected on the hour, every hour. It’s on just such a day that Jack Pelham, a freelance reporter for a paper you haven't heard of, and a man whose personal and professional life is crumbling around him, is sent to interview a woman who reported that her husband went missing - six months ago.

Even with that peculiarity, Jack goes in thinking it’s a nothing story, and he keeps thinking that right up until the moment he’s accosted in by men brandishing firearms demanding to know everything he knows about the missing man. It’s from that moment it all becomes something Jack never saw coming. The chase for the story - from the underbelly of LA to the rough and tumble of Baja California - proves all-consuming and damaging - to him, to everyone around him. Before the day is done, Jack is no longer writing the story, he becomes the story - right up to the point of he himself becoming the missing man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew White
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311246035

Andrew White

Andrew White was named by Business Insider as the Most Creative Person working in Social. In his spare time he writes fiction. His work has won acclaim, including Twitter naming his #WantAnR8 campaign as the best use of Twitter by a company ever at Cannes Lions 2012. He was born in England and currently resides in Los Angeles.

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The Missing Man

Andrew White

Copyright 2012 by Andrew White

Smashwords Edition

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A.P.

You inspired me.

1.

Baja California, Mexico.

San Pedro.

Tomorrow.

They both shot simultaneously. I wasn’t used to what guns actually sounded like when fired, and the reverb echoed off the stone and marble with an amazing ferocity. The sharp explosion of sound and light threw me off to one side, and I struggled to retain my footing even though I wasn’t the one who had been shot. I had little idea of what was going on in that moment, but I could see through the putrid vapor that Barnes had a hole in his chest where there previously hadn’t been.

There were four of us in that room, that great ballroom. Two men, a girl, and myself. All three of those men held guns, including myself, and all three of those men were using them in an aggressive fashion. Two of those men had just fired, and one of those men had been hit. I stood three steps back, watching it happen around me, constantly relieved at my luck of not yet being punctuated by a bullet.

Jesus Christ, no! What are you doing? said Barnes, the man who had been shot. He was panicked and confused, understandably, and his tone was tinged with that sick realization that both the situation and his life were quickly slipping away from his control.

What do you think? said the man, the other man in the room. His name was Wells and he owned that great house, out on the Baja peninsula.

Barnes died before me, quickly and perfunctory, like he was taking out the trash. He fell and he never moved again. I didn’t feel anything for him. I didn’t care at that point. Everything had changed throughout the course of that evening and normalcy was redefined.

It was then that I noticed the gun Wells had just fired was pointed right at me. He was unwavering and unmoved, and seemingly intent to do the same to me that he had done with such precision to Barnes.

Do you want to do this? I said. I wanted to say more, say things with actual weight attached to them, but there didn’t seem much point.

Why not? he replied.

I just pressed down hard on my finger. I heard an extremely loud bang and a flash of white light and then screaming. All at once. Wells recalled violently and the red mist took him in. I knew he was mortally hurt for when he started to turn towards me all life had gone from behind his eyes. But he kept turning anyway and his arm swung around as if balanced on a pendulum, the gun balanced at its very tip.

The inevitable was coming, but I decided to fight it anyway. I kept pulling at the trigger until I could no more and he was no longer sentient but a red-stained rag doll. He went limp before me, pale and malformed, but the man was determination personified. It was as though every last ounce of his will manifested itself in his index finger. His very last act was to fire his gun but once.

I caught the bullet he fired. Abdomen, hard and deep, buried and sinking fast; teeth unable to pull it from the air so in it went. The man proved one thing at his very last: he was a very good shot.

Exceedingly good I quickly realized.

There was no pain. There never was any pain. It was like a gaping hole had opened up in my chest, an organic cavity, which was growing constantly and everything that was me was falling into it. I wanted to cry out to the girl. The girl who had brought me there, to that place, the place I would never leave. There then was a sickening realization and it hit me like a tidal wave: I was dying.

As I dropped to my knees I noticed that Wells had already beaten me to the floor, and a growing pool of red was quickly covering the kentile. My vision seemed to go in and out randomly, but I saw enough to register the girl, Cynthia, staring down at the growing morass of bodies before her. I being one of those bodies meant she was gazing intently at me. It was at that moment that I did go to say something. I hadn’t planned so far ahead as to the exact content of my statement, but my last words – ‘Do you want to do this?’ – kept rebounding in my head as a decidedly hollow, yet seemingly fitting epitaph. No words came out. Nothing but blood flowed up my throat.

Cynthia crossed from where she had stood to gaze down at me. I had wanted nothing more in life than for her to look at me as she looked now. Her pupils opened wide, drinking me in, taking me in. It wasn’t love, but it was close enough.

Then she wasn’t there. Then I just saw the ground in front of me. My eyes slowly followed the lines and contours of the dirt and dust that tracked the floor, making such elaborate patterns that were invisible and somehow irrelevant just two minutes ago. A number of red blotches appeared before my eyes. They formed perfect droplets and continued to fall with no sign of abatement.

I thought she said something, and I strained to hear until it hurt. The ringing was there, clear and constant, it stung me until the white noise blocked everything.

Then I imagined what she might have said. I played it out in my mind for as long as I could manage. I could hear her saying what I wanted her to say even though she never did, and never would. I love you.

Red was before my eyes. I didn’t know what I was thinking or doing. A shadow moved across my red and I tilted by head back to see who had come for me. The girl was moving away.  Floating and sliding. She was moving quickly, up and down, and didn’t seem to notice me laying there before them. Nobody cared now.

She went and was gone, and all I could feel was my own blood on my cheek. It was icy cold on my face and all the lights around me seemed to dim in unison. Then there was dark, so very much of it and it came in onto me so very quick. Even though I had only known her for less than 24 hours, she was to become the last imprinted image on the inner wall of my brain. That was all there was to set me apart from the dark.

It was a good image.

The girl had the package; she held it in her arms like a baby. It was the one thing everyone in that room but me had wanted, and the one reason for everyone being there. She’d carefully lifted it up and away from the growing pools of blood. My left eye was awash with my own discharge and I had trouble picking out her movements unless she was positioned directly before me. She took the package and moved behind me and it was then that all I could see were my own spasms. There was a pause and then I could hear notes from the piano turning and then footsteps walking away until they were no more.

I don’t know how long I lay there but eventually it came upon me that I was alone and that I would die in that room alone. The silence was still and stagnant and overbearing. It slowly but unceasingly built to a piercing white noise such that I went to cover my ears with my hands but they were stone. I was completely still.

Far above me the great chandelier dimmed then darkened completely. Light was being taken from the corner of my eye until I lay in what could only be described as an ever-narrowing cone of existence. It was in fact the opposite of the glorified ‘white light’ mystic; it was as though the aperture of my life was being dialed down before me.

My stomach wrenched violently twice and I coughed up a ream of blood to join what I had already expelled. I could feel my lower body twitching but it was remote, as though it was no longer a part of me. I remembered thinking that this was it now, and I was relieved.

I blinked and my eye never opened again. A forever black. An endless abyss from which to fall into. Like a broken metronome, my breathing slowed until each and every breath rasped against the quiet.

I exhaled with what I thought would become my last breath. And it was and I floated on in a perfect, unerring silence.

My mother smiled at me like she had never done before. A warm, approving smile that made me feel like everything was going to be all right.

And then it wasn’t.

2.

California.

Ventura County.

Today.

My eyes traced the advertisements in the morning’s paper. Cars. Electronics. Clothes. Condos. None of which I could afford; all of which looked enticing.

"Sir?

Yes? I said almost absentmindedly, and almost perturbed that her haste had cut short my enjoyment of a satisfactorily tinny rendition of Mozart’s 5th. Almost.

Mr. Pelham, I double checked and the figures are accurate. Her voice was silky smooth and all-American. Possibly mid-Atlantic, such as the DC metro area, but also equally as possibly not. It was a lilt without any true identifiers or regional twang, which made all the more desirable. And it reminded me of Kate, and I could have stayed on the line forever. Just listening.

So what does that mean?

It means I can’t do anything, I’m afraid.

The ton of bricks that had been precariously balanced upon high since the call had begun finally crashed down proverbial style all around me. Those bricks would have lay to waste my car if it had not already been repo’d (hence the 47-minute telephone call).

What about a federal hardship program or something? I clawed desperately. I had heard in snippets one time on NPR about Obama permitting underwater homeowners to refinance. Was there a provision for leases on BMWs?

That gloriously even tone continued. In circumstances where accounts fall in excess of 90 days in arrears we have no choice but to repossess... She kept speaking but I had long since turned off and tuned out. She was saying that I hadn’t paid my bill in a long time. She was saying there was no hope, and that I was going to have to live in suburban Los Angeles without a car. What she was effectively saying was that I was fucked. 

But I was content to listen. Just to listen. Her voice was the barometer for me going forward in what to look for in a woman when it came to something other than totally facile things like visual stimuli. I had in the past totally negated accents when picking out mates and it had cost me dearly with a lifetime of attractive, intelligent females who I loved to engage in both verbal and physical intercourse, yet their vocal cords usually had the penchant to emit something that sounded as though it had landed on a cheese grater. Shame. But in the more immediate term, I searched her tone rapidly for any sign of sarcasm or lightheartedness that I could potentially leverage as a form of Hail Mary, take pity in me because I can make you laugh over the phone. I found none.

I’m sorry? was all I had.

Sir, we can set you up on an easy payment plan as I explained earlier, but without – 

There it went again to a warming and wonderful white noise. The real ramifications of not having a car in a Los Angeles suburb would become horrifically apparent later (while waiting for the VISTA and dealing with the 25-minute headway on the red line), but at that moment I was reasonably content to carve out a few seconds of respite. Those dulcet tones pricked the back of my neck and I felt a shiver down my spine. She could have continued forever explaining variable APR and finance charges as I was happy to close my eyes and enter a world away from my own, for just a moment. Soothing, almost, that temporary respite.

The room in which I sat made up the entirety of my studio apartment. It was furnished simply, which is to say cheaply. This monastic living was not down to any kindred affinity with Occupy, but rather necessity.

IKEA full bed.

IKEA bookcase.

IKEA media stand.

IKEA sofa, small.

IKEA chest, medium.

It had all been bought new but already looked cheap, which is of course is the modus operandi of the IKEA. The chest of drawers literally came apart in my hands whenever a drawer was opened, or a drawer was closed, and I told myself that was not due to my inability to correctly use a screwdriver. The bulk of my possessions had been thrown away, left with my ex, Craigslisted and/or passed on to Good Will prior to moving in, and thus I had started anew in the land of flat-packed furniture. It was, in short, my reality. A reality I never saw coming, and one I never wanted.

Mr. Pelham? She came through clear that time. I didn’t know how long and in how much detail she had described my bank’s ‘easy payment’ plan. Probably no more than a minute.  Everything I wanted but couldn’t have remained fixated in my eye-line. Jack?

I’m here.

Can I transfer you to the payment department?

No, thanks. I’ll call you back. I hung up the phone. I assumed the payment department would require payment in actual cash dollars.

Those actual cash dollars had dried up ever since the so-called ‘downturn’ – AKA global depression – started appearing in the news every hour and the Ventura County Star started to struggle to find advertisers. The Star was one of those newspapers that appeared substantial from a distance, but had a propensity to drop 80% of its content around your knees. After you finished picking up the notifications of the specials at Ralphs, you found yourself left with something resembling the tissue paper thinness of the Life section of USA Today, sans those wonderful Infographics.

The real issue with the Star was that a number of big accounts dropped off almost immediately. This was then followed by the medium sized accounts, and that continued on down to the small accounts. The sales team was left scrounging around the dregs to pick up accounts to fill the wide swathes left in the paper from the great scythe of editorial cuts. It had been that scythe that had left me high and dry. In other words, a forced transition from a full-time reporter to freelance writer. Benefit-less and without a safety net that allowed me to sleep at night. Freelance was a euphemism for you working, but with less frequency, with less pay, and nothing whatsoever resembling security. I’d been lucky enough to make my rent, but not enough to make my car payments. I had gotten used to sitting stationary on the 405 listening to the singular sob stories of the unemployed masses that NPR had a penchant to feature every hour on the hour, and I was going to miss that. There was something to be said for the solidarity of knowing you aren’t alone.

I thought of that lovely woman on the other end of the telephone line. If she’d given me her extension I would have called her back then and there, just to hear that voice again, for no real reason at all. At 20 cents a word, it would take a lot of stories until I had a reason to call.

I hadn’t moved since I put the phone down. It felt as if I were to move even an inch I’d actually have to consider my current situation, and seeing as I did everything possible not to, I was content to remain, for the moment. Thoughts ranged but always went back to Kate, my ex: what she was doing; if she thought of me; if there was a chance; if she, too, sat at home alone and felt unfulfilled.  At one time she was all I wanted, and all I looked forward to. Just to sit, just to be, with her. My neighbor, God bless him, directly above in 13B and in his size thirteen boots per usual, shook me from my warm melancholy and I turned to face what I had been long avoiding: the paper’s available bylines.

It was an email from my editor: short, blunt and wonderfully to