Cooperstown

It happens like this.

At 11:47pm a black Mercedes drives at approximately seven miles an hour in its lap of the neighbourhood. It returns twenty minutes later and repeats the lap, parking for three minutes outside number fourteen, and then drives away. At 12:44am the Mercedes returns, and resumes its spot outside number fourteen. Ten minutes pass. The Mercedes pulls away, and a black van replaces it.

At 12:57am six men in full black body armour exit the van via the rear doors and head towards house number fourteen. They are carrying Ares Shrike 5.56 machine guns. One man peels away from the group and heads to the rear of the house, while the rest stand at the door. At 12:58am the front door is opened, and the men enter the house.

At 1:02am Tatiana Close is walking towards house number fifteen. She is wearing a dress that ends mid-thigh, and she is inebriated. She glances over at house number fourteen while searching through her purse for the key to her own house. At 1:05am she abruptly changes tack and walks over to house number fourteen. The door is open. She knocks on the doorframe.

At 1:05am Tatiana Close calls, “Mr Keyes?” into the dark hallway. At 1:05am Tatiana Close is shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. The shooter is positioned in the black van parked outside house number fourteen. She falls, already unconscious by the time she hits the ground.

The men in the house are precise and silent. One sees the girl, and nudges her face with the toe of his boot. He bends. He picks her up as if she were a lightweight polymer reproduction of a human being, and carries her across to the black van, and he throws her inside. On his return to number fourteen, he closes the front door behind him.

Inside the house, the men have split to search. It does not take long for them to search the first floor. At 1:10am three men head upstairs while the remaining three begin to rifle through kitchen drawers and cupboards. They find nothing of interest.

I am not sleeping, but I am tired. I don’t put up much of a fight. A tranq shot to the thigh knocks me flat.


I wake up, and the floor is hard and uncomfortable beneath me, and somebody is shouting. It’s dark. I say, “Keep it down.”

Tatiana’s voice is panicked and scratchy. She’s been shouting for a while. She says, “What the fuck’s going on, Mr Keyes? Where are we? What the fuck’s going on?”

I say, “Calm down, okay. It’s fine.” There’s a checklist I always run through when I don’t know where I am. Vision: impaired. Mobility: restricted, arms tied. Pains: headache, dull numbness in my thigh, arms burning. No open wounds. I shift a little. “Can you see?”

“Not a fucking thing, and I—”

I cut across her. “Can you move?”

“No, my arms are tied. I tried to get out but I think they’re those plastic—”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She spits that out at me. I feel her move a little closer, and I can smell her perfume and something alcoholic. She says, “They took my purse. I think they must have injected me with something. My neck feels numb.” She pauses, and I can hear her rustling. Her hair brushes my shoulder. “I was coming back from Lucy’s party – my friend, Lucy – and I saw your door was open, and I went over to go check, and then I don’t remember anything. Mr Keyes, are they going to do something to us?”

The floor starts to rumble under us, and we slide a little to the left. We’re in a van, and it’s moving. I say, “If they were going to do something, they’d have done it already.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, what do you want me to say? Am I supposed to scare the shit out of you? Tell you they’ll blast the door open, kill me and rape you to death? Torture us for information? Shoot us in the head and dump us in a bayou?”

“I just don’t want you to lie to me.”

Her voice is tiny, and I feel like shit. I say, “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t reply. Neither of us says anything for maybe ten minutes.

“My mom didn’t want me to go out tonight,” she says after a while. “Lucy said some guy would be at her party. I’d said I thought he was hot, and she said he’d be there, so I went. I shouldn’t have gone.”

I say, “Don’t dwell on the past. It isn’t real.”