The Hollow Man

We Are the Stuffed Men

“Mr. Bremen? Mr. Bremen, can you hear me?”

Once, as a child of about eight, Bremen had dived into a friend’s swimming pool and, instead of rising to the surface, had simply and effortlessly sunk to the bottom ten feet beneath the surface. He had lain there for a moment, feeling the rough cement against his spine and watching the ceiling of light so far above. Even as he felt his lungs tiring and watched the glory of bubbles rising around him, even as he realized that he could hold his breath no longer and would have to inhale water in a few seconds, he was loath to rise to that surface, achingly reluctant to return to that suddenly alien environment of air and light and noise. So Bremen had stayed there, stubbornly resisting recall until he could resist no longer, and then he had floated slowly to that surface, savoring the last few seconds of aquatic light and muffled noise and the silver flurry of bubbles around him.

He rose slowly now, resisting the pull back to the light.

“Mr. Bremen? Can you hear me?”

Bremen could hear him. He opened his eyes, shut them quickly at the onslaught of whiteness and light, and then, wincing, peered out from between heavy eyelids.

“Mr. Bremen? I’m Lieutenant Burchill, St. Louis Police Department.”

Bremen nodded, tried to nod. His head hurt and seemed to be restrained in some way. He was in bed. White sheets. Pastel walls. The bedside trays and plastic paraphernalia of a hospital room. From his peripheral vision he could see a curtain drawn to his left, the closed doorway to his right. Another man in a gray suit stood behind the seated police lieutenant. Lieutenant Burchill was a heavyset, sallow-skinned man in his early fifties. Bremen thought that he looked a bit like Morey Amsterdam, the saggy-faced comic on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. The silent man behind him was younger, but his expression held the same occupational mixture of fatigue and cynicism.

“Mr. Bremen,” said Burchill, “can you hear me all right?”

Bremen could hear him all right, although everything still had a once-removed, underwater quality to it. And Bremen could see himself through Lieutenant Burchill’s eyes: wan and swaddled looking amid his blankets and bandages, left arm in a cast, his head wrapped in bandages, more bandages visible beneath the thin hospital gown, his eyes swollen and raccoon-ringed from draining blood, and fresh stitches visible beneath gauze on his chin and cheek. An IV dripped clear fluid into his left arm.

Bremen closed his eyes and tried to shut out Burchill’s vision.

“Mr. Bremen, tell us what happened.” The lieutenant’s voice was not gentle. Suspicion. Disbelief that this little twerp could have shot those five wise guys and landed the aircraft by himself Curiosity about what the FBI computer said about this citizen—a college math prof, for Chrissakes—and interest in the dead wife, the arson, and this clown’s connection with New Jersey’s Don Leoni and his bad boys.

Bremen cleared his throat and tried to speak. His voice was little better than a rasp. “Whermi?”

Lieutenant Burchill’s expression did not change. “What was that?”

Bremen cleared his throat again. “Where am I?”

“You’re in St. Louis General Hospital.” Burchill paused a second and added, “Missouri.”

Bremen tried to nod and regretted it. He tried to speak again without moving his jaw.

“I didn’t catch that,” said the lieutenant.

“Injuries?” repeated Bremen.

“Well, the doctor’ll be in to see you, but from what I hear, you’ve got a broken arm and some bruises. Nothing life threatening.”

The younger homicide detective, a sergeant named Kearny, was thinking, Four cracked ribs, a bullet graze over one of those ribs, a concussion, and internal stuff … this idiot is lucky to be alive.

“It’s been about eighteen hours since the crash, Mr. Bremen. Do you remember the crash?” said Burchill.

Bremen shook his head.

“Nothing about it?”

“I remember talking to the tower about the landing gear,” said Bremen. “Then the right engine started making weird noises and … and that’s all I remember.”

Burchill stared. This asshole’s probably lying, but who the hell knows? Somebody put a .45 slug right through the fuselage into the engine.

Bremen felt the pain begin to slide in like a long, slow tide that felt no hurry to recede. Even his mindtouch and the hospital neurobabble shimmered in the wake of it. “The plane crashed, then?” he said.

Burchill continued staring. “Are you a pilot, Mr. Bremen?”

Bremen shook his head again and almost threw up from the pain.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” asked the lieutenant.

“No.”

“Any experience flying light aircraft?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then what were you doing at the yoke of that Piper Cheyenne?” Burchill’s voice was as flat and unrelenting as a rapier thrust.

Bremen sighed. “Trying to land it, Lieutenant. The pilot was shot. Is he alive? Did any of the others survive?”

The thin sergeant leaned forward. “Mr. Bremen, we advised you of your rights some time ago and that Mirandizing was videotaped, but we’re not sure you were completely conscious. Are you aware of those rights? Do you wish an attorney to be present at this time?”

“An attorney?” repeated Bremen. Whatever medication was in the IV drip was making his vision foggy and causing a dull roar in his ears and a fuzziness in his mindtouch. “Why’dIneed’n’torney? Didn’t do anything …”

The sergeant let out a breath, took a laminated card from his coat pocket, and went into the Miranda litany that was so familiar from a million TV cop shows. Gail had always wondered whether police were too stupid to memorize those few lines; she said that the audience had them memorized.

When the sergeant finished and asked again whether Bremen wanted an attorney, Bremen moaned and said, “No. Are the others dead?”

Dead as week-old horsemeat, thought Lieutenant Burchill. The homicide detective said, “Let me ask the questions, okay, Mr. Bremen?”

Bremen closed his eyes in lieu of a nod.

“Who shot who, Mr. Bremen?”

Whom. It was Gail’s voice through the fuzziness. “I shot the one named Bert with his own gun,” said Bremen. “Then all hell broke loose … everybody except the pilot was shooting. Then the pilot was hit and I got up front and tried to land it. Obviously I didn’t do too good a job.”

Burchill glanced at his partner. “You flew a twin-engine turboprop with a damaged engine over a hundred miles, got it into the pattern at Lambert International, and almost landed the sucker. The tower guys say that if the right engine hadn’t quit on you, you would’ve had it down okay. Are you sure you haven’t flown before, Mr. Bremen?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then how do you account for the—”

“Luck,” said Bremen. “Desperation. I was all alone up there. Plus the controls are really sort of simple with all of the automation.” Plus reading the pilot’s mind almost every second of the ten hours or so flying from Las Vegas, added Bremen silently. Too bad he wasn’t there when I needed him.

“Why were you in the plane, Mr. Bremen?”

“First, Lieutenant, tell me how you know my name.”

Burchill stared a moment, blinked, and said, “Your fingerprints are on file.”

“Really?” Bremen said stupidly. The fuzziness of the medication was less now, but the static of pain was rising. “Didn’t know I’d been fingerprinted.”

“Your Massachusetts driver’s license,” said the sergeant. His voice was as close to a monotone as a human voice could come.

“Why were you in the plane, Mr. Bremen?” said Burchill.

Bremen licked his dry lips and told them. He told them about the fishing camp in Florida, the body, Vanni Fucci … everything except the nightmare with Miz Morgan and his weeks in Denver. He assumed that if they had his fingerprints, they would eventually connect him to Miz Morgan’s murder. That was not in the lieutenant’s or sergeant’s thoughts at the moment, but Bremen knew that someone would make the connections before long.

Burchill leveled his basilisk stare at him. “So they were flying you back to New Jersey so that the don himself could whack … could execute you. They told you this?”

“I picked it up from things they said. They evidently didn’t mind talking in front of me … I guess they assumed I wasn’t going to be telling anyone.”

“And what about the money, Mr. Bremen?”

“Money?”

“The money in the steel attaché case.” Four hundred thousand some, schmuck. Some drug money you know something about? Maybe we’re talking about a deal that went wrong at twenty thousand feet?

Bremen just shook his head.

Sergeant Kearny leaned closer. “Do you gamble in Las Vegas very often?”

“First time,” mumbled Bremen. His exhilaration at awakening still alive and relatively in one piece was being replaced by pain and a renewed emptiness. Everything was over. Everything had been over since Gail had died, but Bremen now had to acknowledge the end of his flight, his mindless, brainless, fruitless, heartless attempt to escape the inescapable.

Burchill was saying something. “… to get his weapon?”

Bremen filled in the rest of the lieutenant’s question from the echo of mindtouch. “I grabbed Bert Cappi’s pistol when he fell asleep. I guess they didn’t think that I’d try anything while we were flying.”

Only a madman would try something with so many guns in a light plane, thought Lieutenant Burchill. He said, “Why did you try it?”

Bremen made the mistake of attempting to shrug. His cast and taped ribs stopped him from completing the motion. “What was the alternative?” he rasped. “Lieutenant, I’m hurting like hell and I haven’t seen a doctor or nurse yet. Can we do this later?”

Burchill looked at a small notebook in his left hand, returned his flat gaze to Bremen, and then nodded.

“Am I being charged with something?” asked Bremen. His voice was too weak to hold any real outrage. All he heard was tiredness.

Burchill’s face seemed to sag into even more folds and wrinkles. The only intensity there was in the eyes; they did not miss anything. “Five men are dead, Mr. Bremen. Four of them are known criminals, and it looks as if the pilot was also connected with organized crime. Your rap sheet is clear, but there is the question of your disappearance after your wife’s death … and the fire.”

Bremen could see the shifting vectors of the lieutenant’s thoughts, as ordered and precise in their way as the laser-intense concentration of the poker professionals he had been playing with less than two days before. This guy burns his house down and disappears after his wife kicks it, Burchill is thinking. Then he just happens to be in Florida when Chico Tartugian is getting whacked. And then he just happens to be in Las Vegas when Chico’s killer and the other Leoni boys are making a money run. Uh-huh. The pattern’s not clear yet, but the elements are there—insurance money, drug money, blackmail … and this so-called civilian says he pulled Bert Cappi’s .45 and started blazing away. Some weird shit here, but it’ll sort itself out soon enough.

“Am I being charged with something?” Bremen repeated. He felt himself sliding sideways, slipping into the haze of pained neurobabble that filled the hospital: consternation, outright fear, defiance, depression, and—from many of the visitors—guilty relief that they were not the ones lying in the beds with plastic bracelets on their wrists.

“Not yet,” said Burchill, rising. He nodded the sergeant toward the door. “If what you say is true, Mr. Bremen, then we’ll be doing some more talking soon, probably with an FBI agent present. In the meantime we’ll post a guard on the room so none of Don Leoni’s people can get at you.” Burchill’s image of the uniformed police officer who has been posted down the hall for the past eighteen hours. This Mr. Bremen is going nowhere, either as witness or arraigned murderer or both.

The doctor and two nurses entered as the homicide detectives left, but Bremen was fuzzy enough that he could barely concentrate on the man’s terse medical chatter. He learned what Burchill’s eyes had already told him—learned also that the compound fracture of the left arm was more serious than the lieutenant had known—but the rest was detail.

Bremen let himself slide away into emptiness.