The Ragged End of Nowhere Page 4

  But Hagen was going to find out, one way or the other.

  He owed that much to Ronnie.

  Hagen reassembled the pistol. Dry-cocked it. The action was smooth and tight. Hagen counted out eight blunt-nosed 9-millimeter cartridges from the box, pressed them one by one into the ammunition clip. The golden-jacketed cartridges felt cold and purposeful in his hands. He slid the clip into the pistol. When he slipped the automatic into the shoulder holster and checked himself in the mirror there was only the slightest bulge showing under his sport coat, which was as it should be. His sport coat had been cut by a Berlin tailor who knew his way around a shoulder holster.

  The road to Berlin began in Panama—

  Hagen arrived in-country with the first assault troops from the Eighty-second Airborne Division in December 1989. Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega had become a loose cannon in Central America and the Bush administration decided it was time to take him down to the pavement. On the flight in the soldiers inside the C-130 were silent. Most of them had no combat experience whatsoever—had never shot at a man, had never been shot at themselves. It had all seemed like a big jolly show during their briefing at Fort Bragg but now, a few miles from the coast of Panama, it looked slightly different. . . .

  Hagen was a staff sergeant assigned to a Fourth Psychological Operations Group loudspeaker team. Using banks of loudspeakers carried on a jeep, Hagen and his team spent that first day and night broadcasting prerecorded propaganda messages across the shifting front lines. The messages were supposed to convince the Panamanian Defense Force soldiers to drop their weapons and surrender, but most of the time they succeeded only in drawing fire. Hagen’s recollection of those first hours in Panama consisted largely of lying facedown in a dirty street while small arms fire sailed over his head and the placid Spanish voice coming over the loudspeakers spoke of surrender, useless resistance and safe conduct passes at 120 decibels.

  Later, when Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican embassy, the Nunciatura, Hagen’s team was one of the loudspeaker units ordered to take up positions around the embassy and blast raucous rock-and-roll music at the building around the clock. The army brass wanted to create a wall of sound around the Nunciatura that would keep the assembled representatives of the world press from using surveillance microphones to eavesdrop on the negotiations going on inside the building between Noriega and Vatican officials. Late in the afternoon, in the midst of the earsplitting noise erupting from the loudspeakers, two Americans in civilian clothes appeared and began asking far too many questions. Reporters, Hagen thought, but when he reported their presence to the officer in charge he was quickly corrected—the two men were advisors from the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA men were intrigued by the work of the PSYOPS teams. Warfare designed to work on the mind—it was right up their alley. One humid evening Hagen spent several hours drinking warm beer and talking shop with one of the advisors, a man named William Severance. Six months later Hagen left the Army and returned home to Las Vegas, took the first job that came his way—security officer at the Ray brothers’ casino. It wasn’t long before Hagen wondered why he’d ever come back—his father was dying, his younger brother seemed to be headed for a jail cell or a drug overdose, and the Ray brothers were just shady enough that Hagen worried about landing in jail himself. He’d been back more than a year when he received a letter with a Virginia postmark and “Career Placement Service” as the return address. The letter advised him that if he was interested in civilian employment related to his work in the military, he should call the enclosed toll-free number.

  When Hagen called he found that he was speaking with the recruiting branch of the CIA.

  William Severance was putting together a small team to perform some work in the recently re united Germany. Severance had been favorably impressed with Hagen in Panama and he recalled that Hagen spoke German. Was Hagen interested in employment with the CIA?

  A trip to Washington followed. Hagen found himself sitting in a blue plastic chair in a cold concrete building. There were numerous applications. There were numerous questionnaires. There were reasoning tests. Language tests. Psychological examinations. Physical examinations. Polygraph examinations. Security and suitability examinations. The bespectacled doctors and analysts peered at him over the tops of open file folders and made cryptic notations on yellow legal pads. Hagen began to get the feeling that the smoke detectors in the ceiling hid microphones, the paintings on the walls hid cameras. The testing went on and on, the questions often untenable. Do you have trouble distinguishing voices? True or false, I enjoy reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Do you experience feelings of alienation and if so, why? True or false, I find that most of my friendships are hollow. Describe your father, in two words. Describe your mother, in two words. If you could live as a member of the animal kingdom, what animal would you be and why? True or false, I don’t like large bodies of water. True or false, I prefer winter to summer. True or false, I’d rather steal than lie. True or false, I’d rather kill than betray.

  Somehow he got the job . . .

  “Jack Gubbs?”

  “That’s right.”

  The bleary-eyed man in the green cotton bathrobe who answered the apartment door was a couple of inches taller than Hagen and thirty pounds heavier. His round face was puff y and red. The unkempt mustache hanging under his flat nose looked like a dark stain that the man couldn’t quite scrub away.

  “I’m Bodo Hagen. Ronnie Hagen’s brother.”

  The man’s eyes opened a bit wider. “I was real sorry to hear about what happened to Ronnie.”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Gubbs ran the tips of two fat fingers over his regrettable mustache. “Yeah, sure.”

  Gubbs lived in a back apartment in a yellow stucco complex a couple of blocks off Rainbow Road. A long couch stood against one wall, propped up at one end by a piece of wood. The coffee table in front of the couch was littered with old magazines, two overflowing ashtrays, empty glasses and soda cans, a dirty paper plate. Heavy drapes were pulled closed across the front window.

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Gubbs said, nodding toward the far side of the room, as though the mess was something that was just now occurring in that one dark corner. “So you’re Ronnie’s brother? Marty Ray’s talked about you. You live overseas or something, right? Like Ronnie did.” Gubbs imbued the word overseas with great suspicion.

  “How’s Marty these days?”

  “He’s doing all right.”

  “You work at Diamond Jim’s?”

  “Yeah. Graveyard.”

  “Sorry to wake you up.”

  “You want a drink?”

  Hagen declined the offer. He took a seat on the couch while Gubbs walked into the kitchen, his bare feet making sticking noises on the linoleum. Gubbs’s movements were slow and shaky. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five or so, but he moved like an old man. Thirty-five, going on sixty. Gubbs returned with a water glass half full of a clear liquor. As Gubbs sat down in an armchair next to the couch Hagen caught the smell of peppermint.

  Schnapps—for breakfast. Gubbs had a rough diet.

  “I understand Ronnie stayed here last week,” Hagen said.

  “He needed a place to crash. I told him he could stay here as long as he wanted. He showed up a week ago Monday, I think. Yeah, Monday night. Stayed for a couple of nights and then he found an apartment someplace, I’m not sure where.”

  As Gubbs worked on his schnapps he told Hagen that he and Ronnie had both started working for the Ray brothers at Diamond Jim’s at the same time. They’d hung around together quite a bit back then. But Gubbs didn’t hear from Ronnie after Ronnie joined the Legion. Gubbs was surprised when Ronnie suddenly appeared out of the blue the week before. “He gets back into town and a few days later he gets killed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard.”

  “Did Ronnie say anything about being in trouble?”

  “Shit, he wasn’t here l
ong enough to get into trouble.”

  “I heard he lost quite a bit at the tables.”

  Gubbs swirled the liquor around in his glass. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Did my brother leave any of his belongings here?”

  “No, nothing. Didn’t have much with him. Just a suitcase.”

  “Just one?”

  “That’s all I saw.”

  “Did Ronnie say anything about a wooden hand he wanted to sell?”

  Gubbs frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means a hand, made out of wood. That he wanted to sell.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why did Ronnie need a fence?”

  “A fence?” Gubbs laughed out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes darted around the room, finally landed on a spot on the wall several inches to one side of Hagen’s head. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but maybe you’ve gotten hold of some bad information. All I know is, Ronnie showed up and he needed a place to stay and I told him he could stay here. We had a few drinks and talked about old times, and then he gets a place of his own and he takes his stuff and leaves. A couple of days later I hear that he’s dead.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  Gubbs looked squarely at Hagen now. “Marty told me. He heard it on the news. Listen, let me ask you something—do you always make noises like a cop? I don’t dig this interrogation bullshit.”

  “Ronnie was my brother, Gubbs. Someone murdered him. I’m trying to piece together what happened when he got into town. If I can do that, maybe I can find out who killed him. You’re the only person I know of who spent any time with him. I just want to know what you know.”

  “You’ve been talking to someone else. Sounds like they know more than I do. You’re better off sticking with them.”

  Gubbs took another drink. From somewhere outside Hagen heard the squeal of small children playing. The lively sound was incongruous with the pall inside Gubbs’s apartment. Gubbs went on. “Shit, I was working most of time. I didn’t see him that much. That’s all there is. If he got into trouble at the tables, I don’t know about it. You sure you don’t want a drink? You act like maybe you could use one.”

  When Hagen didn’t respond Gubbs pulled himself out of the armchair, walked across the room. He pushed the drapes aside and peered out the window, then came back and took up a position in the kitchen doorway, his glass in one hand. Gubbs wanted to put some distance between himself and Hagen. Gubbs was nervous.

  “There’s one thing,” Gubbs said, like he’d just thought of it. “Maybe you’re interested. One night when Ronnie was staying here he showed up at Diamond Jim’s. I wasn’t there but some other people who were around when Ronnie worked there saw him and I heard about it from them. Ronnie might’ve spent some time at the tables that night. But if he lost some large, I didn’t hear that.”

  “What night was it?”

  “Might’ve been Tuesday.”

  “Did Ronnie talk to Marty?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Why?”

  “Marty was out of town.”

  “When did he get back?”

  “Maybe you’d better ask Marty.”

  “Maybe I’d better.”

  Hagen moved to get up from the couch. He let his arm brush open his sport coat. Gubbs caught a glimpse of the holstered pistol underneath.

  “So you are a cop.”

  Hagen stood. “No, but I’ve talked to them. They don’t know about you. They’re running a murder investigation, Gubbs. They’d be interested in talking to you.”

  “I’ll talk to them. Why not?”

  “Why haven’t you talked to them already? Ronnie was murdered last week. He was your friend. Most people would’ve called the police and told them what they knew. But you didn’t call them, Gubbs. What is it you don’t want them to know?”

  “Maybe I’m just not civic-minded.”

  “That’s not the right answer.”

  “Who told you about me?”

  Hagen didn’t respond. Apparently Ronnie hadn’t told Gubbs about his visit to the Sniff and how Ronnie had left Gubbs’s phone number with him. Good. It gave Gubbs something else to wonder about. Maybe keep him a little worried.

  “Straighten me out, Gubbs. What kind of trouble was Ronnie in?”

  “I don’t know. I mind my own business.”

  “Talk to me or talk to the police.”

  Gubbs set his drink down. He removed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the breast pocket of his bathrobe. The cigarette he pulled from the pack was crooked but Gubbs didn’t bother to straighten it out before he lit it. Hagen found an empty white envelope amid the clutter on the coffee table. He wrote his name and the Venetian’s phone number on the envelope, then stepped over to Gubbs.

  “Listen, Gubbs. Ask around. I want to know what kind of trouble Ronnie got into. I think you know where to look. I want some names.”

  Gubbs said nothing. Hagen waited for him to take the envelope but Gubbs was frozen in place. Hagen tossed the envelope onto the seat of the armchair. Then Hagen grabbed the front of Gubbs’s bathrobe. Pushed him hard against the wall. Gubbs’s head bounced off the plasterboard with a hollow thud. The cigarette fell from his mouth. Hagen ground the burning cigarette into the carpet with the toe of his shoe.

  “I’ll give you a day, Gubbs,” Hagen said. “If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow night, I’m coming back. When I get done with you the police will be right behind me, and they’ll have a crack at you too. Understand?”

  The fearful look on Gubbs’s face seemed genuine.

  Hagen left, closing the apartment door softly behind him on the way out.

  Walking out to his car Hagen wondered what he’d just set in motion. He’d set Gubbs to thinking. Now Hagen would give him time to think. Let him twist in the wind for a day, wondering what Hagen knew and who Hagen was talking to. Wondering whether he’d rather talk to the police or to Hagen.

  Hagen had cast a net.

  Now he’d see what he could catch with it.

  Ronnie might’ve turned out like Gubbs. Drinking alone in an empty apartment. The long dark hours preying on his mind while helplessness and self-pity collected in the corners of the room. Weighing him down. Like cement shoes.

  A drowning man, sliding down into oblivion.

  Ronnie was drinking hard when Hagen got out of the army and returned to Las Vegas. Harder than a twenty-year-old man had any right to drink. And he’d picked up an amphetamine habit. Ronnie hadn’t thought anything of it, had even handed Hagen the plastic bag full of green and white pharmaceutical capsules, telling him to take what he wanted. Ronnie ate them by the handful. Mixed them with the booze. Ronnie laughed it off, assured his older brother that he knew what he was doing. Sure, he dabbled in drugs, “But I never stuck a needle in my arm.” As though this was the one sure sign of virtue in all things.

  Hagen blamed their father. That was what it always came back to. A background in the Waffen-SS and the French Foreign Legion hadn’t prepared Karl Hagen to raise children. Things might have worked out all right if their mother hadn’t died shortly after Ronnie was born. But she had, and suddenly Karl Hagen had two young sons to raise and no inclination to learn how to raise them. What was there to learn? Karl Hagen had believed that he knew all he needed to know about handling young men.

  And Ronnie, being much younger than Hagen, caught the brunt of it.

  Hagen could remember when the mere sound of their father’s car pulling into the driveway could send Ronnie into a fit of terrified sobbing. Hagen remembered the long red welts on Ronnie’s legs from the swift bite of the leather belt, and the small scabs where the metal belt buckle broke the skin. More than once Ronnie had tried to run away from home to escape the angry tirades of their father. But running away only made it worse when their father found him and brought him home.

  As Ronnie grew up and their father grew older and more si
ckly, things changed. Ronnie began to fight back, the two of them often coming to blows. Hagen saw it as a good sign. Ronnie had spirit. He was willing to stand up for himself. Fighting back was better than being beaten down into nothing. But when Hagen returned to Las Vegas from the army he saw the drinking and the pills. Ronnie was looking for peace in oblivion.

  Shortly after Hagen left for Germany their father died. Hagen hadn’t been able to return to take care of things, hadn’t particularly wanted to. Karl Hagen was dead—so be it. Ronnie kept his distance too—a lawyer took care of the affairs of the funeral and the estate. But Karl Hagen was gone, and with him went the source of Ronnie’s turmoil. Hagen assumed that the bitter war between Ronnie and their father must necessarily be over.

  If only things were that easy.

  When Hagen received that first letter from Ronnie, telling him that Ronnie had joined the Legion, it made no sense at first. Then the answer came to him. The Legion had been their father’s home and the source of his pride. By joining the Legion, Ronnie was going off to fight one last battle with the ghost of their dead father. If Ronnie survived the Legion, it would be a great victory. He would win at their father’s game and in that way prove to himself that he was as strong and hard as Wolfgang Karl Hagen had ever been.

  And Ronnie did survive the Legion.

  But he didn’t survive coming home.

  Hagen drove out to East Las Vegas.

  He wanted to take a look at the apartment that Ronnie rented the day before he was murdered. He’d made a note of the address when he read the police reports in McGrath’s office. An address out on Toledo Road.

  The address belonged to a narrow, termite-eaten building that had once been a motel. Weeds grew in the deep fissures that crisscrossed the asphalt parking area. The electric sign out front hung from a crooked post: EL DORADO APARTMENTS—WEEKLY AND MONTHLY RATES.

  Hagen found the manager’s apartment and knocked. The woman who answered the door was elderly, her face pinched and hard.

  Hagen introduced himself. He was here to pick up the belongings of his deceased brother. The woman peered at him. “You have identification?”