The Confessor (29 page)

She became aware of someone arriving . . . and hovering close by. She glanced to her left – and a man smiled at her when her gaze found him. A thirty-something in a shiny, expensive suit with a pleasant, practiced smile and a glass of white wine.

‘You’ve been sitting here alone for a while,’ he said in perfect French-tinted English. ‘Could I buy you—’

‘Fuck off.’

If the command had been a knife it would have cut him in half.

‘Okay,’ he mumbled, and walked off.

She took in a slow breath and let it out smoothly, helping her shoulders to sag. This was the biggest chance of her life – and she was starting to feel like Geiger was up front driving the train and she was sitting back in the club car, sipping her coffee, watching the countryside roll by – and not knowing when it would stop.

And where the fuck was her little brother . . . ?

The taxi entered Place Pigalle, circling, and Victor leaned forward from the backseat.

‘Arrêtez ici,’ he said, and the driver pulled over in front of the Cupidon Theatre X. Victor handed him a ten-euro note, stepped out, and headed up the boulevard. One of the strip clubs had a speaker above its doorway – and Johnny Hallyday called out across forty years from another world. ‘C’est une honky-tonk woman. Fini, fini, fini le honky-tonk blues . . . ’ Victor grinned. In the 1960s, what kid hadn’t wanted to be Johnny Hallyday? He had started trying to grow those long sideburns as fast as he could – until his father came home from two weeks away, proclaimed – ‘Rock’n’roll est merde!’ – and personally soaped up his son’s cheeks and shaved them.

He wasn’t going to give the whores and hucksters Dewey’s description and ask them questions, because if the kid was dead – and the cops came round asking about him later on – there was a tiny chance he and Dewey could be tied together . . . and tiny was big. He would just walk and look for the car.

Zanni’s admission had stunned him – a rare event in itself. He’d learned long ago that blood was indeed thick, and could muddle the mind and lead to foolish decisions and far worse – but for Zanni to make that choice, cold and diamond-hard as she was . . . It had a double-edged effect on him. He would have to do a fast reassessment of certain aspects of her – but more important, an investigation of his own instincts were in order. He’d dealt with them both, brother and sister, and missed it all on each end.

He crossed to the pedestrian divider of the boulevard so he could see the cars on both sides, parked east and west, and moved on, doing his due diligence – but whenever he conjured up an image of Dewey it was not of him sitting in the car watching the street, or strolling down a sidewalk a safe thirty yards behind Geiger, or at a bar having a drink . . .

It was still possible, though unlikely, that Geiger would call in, and that they might head for Dalton together without Dewey – the three musketeers on a final adventure.
Un pour tous, tous pour un . . .
But each of the variables, the many uncertainties that defined this job from the start, suddenly seemed more present. They were like weeds in a bed of flowers, capable of strangling all that had been carefully designed and planted – so his job now would be that of a merciless gardener. He would have to keep a keen, diligent eye on the participants – and, if necessary, be ready to pull them out by their roots.

First, he’d have to find a club that would let him in for a piss without paying the door charge. His prostate was fucking with him for a change.

When Geiger had stepped outside to the patio for a cigarette, the first thing he’d done was take off his shoes and socks, and the cool, rough smoothness of the flagstone beneath his feet was sending a soothing, loosening effect up his whole frame. He sent a long, cottony stream of smoke into the night, and watched it curl in on itself like a bashful snake. Hanging from one of the patio’s posts was a mobile of tiny brass bells, motionless in the still air. He raised a hand and tapped them with a finger – and they sang softly to him.

He was thinking about Dewey, watching the final sequence play out. Bodies colliding, the random stumbling, the sound of old wood cracking . . . The utter melancholy of Dewey’s last statement – ‘
It isn’t fair . . .
’ – then life giving up on him like a long- suffering lover finally saying goodbye. Geiger kept rerunning it over and again like a film loop – trying to render it mundane, to strip it of its power through repetition. He had learned what he needed to know . . . to possibly save a life – and it had cost a life.
It isn’t fair . . .

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘I don’t drink.’

Christine was in the open patio doorway. ‘Ice packs are ready.’

‘I’ll finish my cigarette.’

She stepped out beside him, a highball glass in her hand. ‘There’s never a sound out here when it’s very late, except for the bells.’ She took a sip of her drink, and then stared at the amber elixir. ‘Bourbon. Harry’s favorite. But he liked the cheap kind. The kind that burned going down.’ She sat down in one of the pair of wicker chairs. It gave out a small squeak as she settled in. ‘He said he’d stopped drinking. Did you know him when he drank?’

‘For one night. When I offered him a job, I said he would have to stop.’

‘
You
got him to stop drinking?’

‘No. It was his choice.’

Christine was beginning to feel the weight of her confusion. Just being around Geiger was disorienting. He was like a magnet causing nearby compasses to go haywire.

‘Harry worked for you?’

‘With me. We were partners.’

‘In what kind of business?’

Geiger sent another plume into the air. ‘Information Retrieval.’

There was something about the term that brought a faint tingle of goosebumps to her forearms.

‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Clients paid me to acquire information from a third party.’

‘You mean – some kind of . . . research?’

Geiger turned his head for the
click
– and got it. ‘I interrogated people.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ she said, but was afraid that she did. She didn’t realize her uneasiness had made her shift in the chair until she heard the old wicker creak.

Now Geiger’s head went left, twenty degrees.
Click
. ‘I tortured people to get them to tell me the truth.’ And he blinked. Slowly. Once.

There was a surge in Christine’s brain – a cavalry of chemicals trying to deal with the incomprehensible . . .

‘You are . . . a torturer?’

‘Not anymore. I was.’

‘And “Information Retrieval” is just another name for torture?’

‘Yes. It is.’ Geiger felt the growing heat of his cigarette between his fingers as it burned down close to his flesh. He flicked it into the flat darkness of the yard, took out his pack and jiggled another loose.

‘Give me one,’ said Christine.

He handed her one. His lighter flicked, she leaned in, and when her eyes looked up at him for a moment, Geiger saw the flame encased in both of them. It seemed as if it had always been there.

He lit himself up and took a few steps onto the grass, out of the light. Christine drew on the cigarette. She’d never liked the taste, but the sensation was pleasing. Geiger was a lean blur in the black with a tiny, glowing orange dot. A sudden breeze set the bells ringing.

‘Harry ran the business side,’ he said. ‘Research, transcribing, book-keeping, the website . . .’

‘Website . . . ?’ She watched the hot tip rise like a firefly and suddenly glow brighter. ‘Jesus, Geiger . . . A
website
?!’ There was a grating mix in her outburst – pure astonishment, outrage, and acknowledgement of the absurd all tumbling out together. ‘How in God’s name does . . . ? I mean – is there a school where you learn this? Torture 101?’

Geiger stepped back into the light. ‘Actually, there are training programs. Governments have them . . . the military. But it was instinctual with me. I have a lot of experience with pain.’

Christine looked at the cigarette between her fingers as if she had no idea how it got there . . . and tossed it away.

‘Is that what you were doing with the dead man?’

‘Yes. To get information about Harry and Ezra’s father.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘I know where they are now.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s best you don’t know that.’ Geiger slowly rose up on the balls of his feet, stretching the calves and Achilles. Then down, then up again. ‘I understand some of what you’re thinking, Christine.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. I do. That’s why I stopped . . . last July – until now.’ He took a long pull on his cigarette. ‘You are repulsed by torture – and ashamed that you’re glad I was able to find out where Harry is by those means.’

She felt revealed, naked.

‘You’re the first person I’ve talked to about any of this, Christine.’

‘You didn’t regale people with it at dinner parties, huh?’

She heard the mordant underside of her tone – and wondered why she wanted to hurt him. She watched him drop his cigarette to the grass and grind it out with the bare heel of his foot. Then he looked back up at her. The sarcasm had made no impression. Not in his placid expression, or his stony eyes.

‘I don’t go to dinner parties,’ he said, and came toward her, and then past her into the house.

Geiger sat at the dining table, shirtless. His shoulder was swollen, but not discolored, which meant there hadn’t been any internal tears. He was studying the place – the dining room, living room. He felt a sense of stasis around him. Everything seemed firmly set in its place – furniture, the paintings on the walls, vases, curios – as if nothing had been moved, or switched, or replaced for a long time. And there were no photographs of anyone – no evidence of connections, no proof of the past. It was as if consciously or unknowingly her purpose had been to create a space in which time had no role, a haven where change was irrelevant.

Christine came in from the kitchen with her arms full – three Ace bandages and two large zip-lock plastic bags filled with ice cubes. She dumped everything on the table.

‘Where should they go?’

He tapped the top of his collarbone at the joint. ‘Balance one across here first. Wrap a bandage around a few times, under the armpit, and then around the chest once.’

Christine positioned an ice bag and Geiger slowly raised his arm twenty degrees to allow the bandage through. There was a looseness in the joint that concerned him more than the pain, but the cold was a balm. Christine began wrapping, over the bag and under the armpit, round and round.

‘Too tight?’

‘No.’

He needed to lock down a schedule. It was almost 2 a.m. He’d need a small meal, a shower, and two hours’ sleep before he left.

‘Around the chest now?’

‘Yes. Twice.’

Christine watched things in him tense and ripple as he leaned forward from the waist, away from the chair’s back. His sleek, lean body reminded her of a perfect machine, except for the star-shaped scar in his pectoral.

‘Is that a bullet wound?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘It’s a long story. Last July.’

She started going around his chest and back with the bandage. ‘You keep mentioning July . . .’

‘Harry . . . his sister . . . Ezra . . . his father . . . myself. We found ourselves in the middle of something. People died.’

Her hand brushed against his bare skin. It was cool and tight, and she felt hard muscle beneath it.

‘Some men kidnapped Ezra . . . in order to get to his father. His father had some very sensitive, classified videos the government wanted to stay hidden. I took Ezra from them – to get him back to his mother. The man who has Harry and Ezra’s father now – Dalton – he was involved.’

Geiger let his eyes fall shut. He hadn’t had time yet to focus on what to do about Soames. If he tried to contact her, to alert her to Victor’s duplicity . . . It didn’t feel like something he could tell her on the phone – and person to person could create a multitude of entanglements. If he chose not to tell her and go on alone – she’d be a certain casualty, a sacrificial lamb whether she got to Dalton’s or not. He suspected Victor preferred a blade to a bullet.

‘Are you all right . . . ?’ she asked.

The sudden smell of lavender, riding in on a breeze. The question came again. She was very close.

‘. . . Are you all right?’

So close the softness of her voice was like a feather tickling his ear.

‘Yes, Ma. I’m all right. What should I do?’

‘You can’t do anything, sweetness,’
she said
. ‘There’s nothing to do.’

He had the heart of a boy, and it beat against his ribs like a captive animal flailing at the bars of its cage.

‘Are you all right?’ A warm hand came to rest on his forearm. ‘Geiger . . . Are you all right?’

He opened his eyes. Christine was watching him with a tilted look.

‘I asked three times if you were all right. You didn’t hear me.’

‘I heard you. But I thought you were someone else.’

Geiger looked like a weary sailor who’d navigated through a thick fog back out into familiar waters, and Christine decided that he was the strangest and saddest person she had ever met.

‘Where does the other ice pack go?’

Geiger tapped the outer arm below the shoulder joint. ‘Here.’ He took an ice bag and held it against his deltoid, and Christine picked up another bandage and began.

‘I have a question,’ he said.

‘Yes?

‘What does
soleil couchant
mean?’

Christine slowed in her movements. ‘It means sunset.’

‘Why did you name the café Soleil Couchant?’

She did two more circuits with the bandage and tucked the end in.

‘Watching the sunset was something my daughter and I loved to do together. It was her favorite thing.’ The hour and angst was catching up to her, tugging at her to slow down. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

Geiger nodded. His eyes followed her as she went into the kitchen. He tried to summon an image of her and Harry and their little daughter – sitting in a room, walking in a park, sharing a meal . . . a unit, content to be as they were, together – and he had no difficulty seeing Harry wearing a comfortable, easy grin like a favorite, old sweater. When Christine opened the refrigerator, she bent down and the silver door blocked his view of her – and he saw his own, blurred reflection in the burnished steel instead, the melted features drained of color and expression. The irony was not lost on him.