Heathern (15 page)

"This is what Thatcher wants now?" I asked. "Every time
I hear it he's added a little more."

"It's junior's backup, under any circumstance. A wise
move, certainly. Where is Thatcher, anyway? Why isn't he
down here yet?"

"He said he needed to brief the guards."

Bernard stared into his screen as if attempting to divine
the future from entrails. "Stuff something in his mouth if
and when he starts adlibbing."

Thatcher stuck his head through the doorway, giving us
an impression of delight. "How's everybody this morning?" he asked, barreling in, clapping his hand on Lester's
shoulder as if testing its friability. "What's the holdup?
Can't sit around here all day."

"We can't?" said Bernard, harvesting folders from the
fields of his desk. "Peruse the background material, Thatcher. You've seen the agreement you're signing, haven't
you?"

"I'll wing it."

Our three guards trailed him into the office, each garbed
in identical black suits with double-breasted jackets and
baggy trousers, in toto resembling the fourth-string dance
line at a deb ball. Jake scratched his nose, taking care not to
remove any part of it with his still-attached scalpel. Avi,
seeing Lester, allowed his eyes to lose their focus until they
appeared to sink within his head. Gus's look held so little
life I thought he might have had a dentist sever his facial
nerves, so he would never again have to worry about giving
anything away.

"Never felt so up," said Thatcher. "Had a hell of an
appetite this morning. I could've et a dog-"

"Otsuka's not Korean, Thatcher," said Bernard. "Make
do with sashimi. Go there, talk, sign, and leave. Simple?"

"It's handleable. Take care of Lester while we're away.
Start pushing on that new info."

"Everything's under control," Bernard said. "What isn't,
will be. Come back with the agreement signed--

"Or don't come back?" Thatcher asked, laughing. "Don't
come in your pants about it, hell-"

Bernard's blush was so intense that for an instant he
could have passed as Susie's brother. "Some people are
more useful alive, Thatcher. Remember that."

"We'll see how the jury calls it," he answered.

I never worried about Lester's safety when he left my
house at night; in daylight, at Dryco, there seemed so much
more to fear. He'd be with me that night, I knew all the
same. As our quintet departed, Gus radioed the lobby
before boarding the elevator, that multitudes might be
warned.

"Dryden party descending. Please prepare."

Thatcher almost bounded off the elevator walls as we
dropped to earth, in the cab's dim light appearing to toss off
sparks. "They got the wounds," he said, chuckling. "I got
the salt." Peering into the lenses affixed to the corners of the
elevator's ceiling, he made faces, picked his teeth, slammed
his fists against his enclosure. If I hadn't known he never
touched the product, I could have only imagined that he'd
done a snootful before allowing his feet to touch the floor
that morning.

Jake dashed into the lobby as we landed, investigating all
surrounding, sheer performance of his job sending him into
paroxysms of mindless ecstasy not unlike Thatcher's. Our
route to the exit transversed the breadth of the building's
lobby and then the width of the outdoor plaza. Innumerable times Gus warned Thatcher that his chosen path was
forever insecurable; hearing such truth only assured
Thatcher that he should pass no other way. Gus snapped
his fingers; lobby guards drew around us, shouldering guns
and clutching long batons in their knobby hands. Once we exited, the guards formed two long unbroken lines, forcing
hundreds of late-morning passersby into pedlock while we
ambled to our car.

"Jake," Thatcher shouted ahead. "That guy. Watch him."

A man wearing a suit cut to appear as expensive as
Thatcher's attempted to crash the line, refusing to break his
stride for those either of heaven or of earth. As our
barricade pushed him away he lost all reason, slinging his
attache case to the sidewalk, aiming curses at anyone near.
When Jake approached he stepped forward again, leaning
in between members of the line.

"Queer bastard!" he yelled, his tight collar buried beneath his billowing jowls. Spinning en pointe, Jake flung
out his hand as if miming, for younger children, the sway of
an elephant's trunk. The man tumbled onto the sidewalk.
Thatcher, edging by, threw himself into the car; sinking into
the back seat's leather, he breathed deep of the Siberian air
within.

"Good to get out among the folks," he murmured. Gus
sat next to the driver; Jake and Avi perched in the jumpseats
facing us.

"Where are we meeting Otsuka?" I asked. Such details
went unrelayed while they might be overheard and put to
evil purpose.

"Midtown," said Thatcher, folding his arms before him.
From the side of his mouth he spoke into the intercom.
"How long till we get there, Gus?" Inches of lucite and steel
separated our compartment from the rest of the car; Thatcher enjoyed pointing out that were we to be bombed, some of
us could survive.

"Twenty minutes," said Gus, his voice crackling around
us as it broke through the fuzz. "Depending on traffic."

Jake gripped the edge of the seat with his unapplianced
hand so as to avoid being jostled to the floor as the car
lurched across potholes, swinging north onto Broadway.
Once the avenue ran one-way downtown from Columbus Circle; Thatcher, surely for no reason other than to show
that he could have it done, decreed that its traffic should
race salmon-like upstream.

"What a wonderful world," he said, sighing, seeming so
overcome by its beauty as to lose every remnant of worry
and care. A riot was underway at the Federal Building,
several blocks north of City Hall. Police restrained leashed
Alsatians and faced a crowd of black citizens: front-line
protesters wore knee-length coats; demonstrators in the
rear carried signs, and clubs of impromptu design.
GREENASSES OUT OF HARLEM, many of their placards read.
Some of the others, ones hoisted by immigrants or the
supporters of immigrants, demanded FREE BROOKLYN NOW.
As we glided uptown, unbothered so long as we kept to our
isolated center lane, the protesters moved in: those in the
front pulled cats from beneath their coats and threw them
onto the dogs; the others surged ahead, swinging.

"Can't depend on cops to do shit these days," said
Thatcher, watching as if he was interested. "No excuse for
it. Complain, complain, nothing those people've done for
fifty years but complain-"

"It's their only right, Mister Dryden." Avi never feared
putting his beliefs into words, knowing that no one who
spoke freely could be harmed so long as words were flung
forth without matching action.

"They got the right to work with what they're given,"
Thatcher said, concluding, "Hell. Didn't l?"

We bore north; Army vehicles headed south to balm the
suffering they found. The turret of the lead tank swung
right and fired at a News4 van parked close to the disturbance, bringing forth a yellow blossom that shot hot metal
spores into the surrounding crowd. As our car rocked with
the concussion I turned to look behind us; soldiers welled
up from the skin of the tanks, raising their rifles, firing into
the people blocks before the disturbance proper.

"Your news station, Mister Dryden," Avi pointed out.

"My Army," he said. "Joanna, you get a chance to look
over the agreement?" I nodded. "You read the particulars?
See anything funny?"

"Not at all."

With Thatcher's blessing the Army was at work farther
north, constructing a concrete wall from river to river down
the center of Fourteenth Street. They intended that each
Manhattan neighborhood would thereby be better secured
from agitators drifting in from other neighborhoods to
assault the productive; to live thus would be no different
from living in heaven, in a sense, where the quieting
awareness of existing eternally beneath unblinking eyes
was never forgotten.

"You think this will take long?"

"No," said Thatcher.

Throughout the twenties and thirties clusters of people
bundled rags lay sleeping against the locked doors of vacant
buildings; knowing a moment's peace, aware that few cared
enough to harass them.

"Why do you hate the Japanese so, Mister Dryden?" Avi
asked.

"What'd you say?" Words do stick, sometimes, if hurled
at the proper moment. Thatcher was silent for a minute or
two trying perhaps to rationalize an explication of beliefs
never before challenged. "I'm sorry, I heard you. Let me try
to explain," he said. "Two men want the same woman. She
pretends to be indifferent to both of them. Till one comes
out ahead she's not going to let on how she feels about the
one who's winning. Might not matter to her which one
wins." He sat forward in his seat, newly intent on his
metaphor. "Does to them. Maybe they're old friends.
Maybe they hate each other. Could be that if they hadn't
fallen into the situation they'd never have given a good
goddamn what happened to the other one. Give it time. Soon enough they'll do anything to get the advantage.
Anything. People'll do anything if they want something bad
enough, period. I don't have anything against the Japanese.
But they're there. They want my woman."

"What if the woman's indifference is genuine?" I asked.

"The fight takes on its own life," he said. "After a while
she might as well not even be there. Love or business,
politics or war, same difference in any situation. Sooner or
later you'll be doing stuff you'll find painful to remember,
later on. Stuff you won't want to tell your kids about. Do
things you don't believe you're doing even as you're doing
'em. It's in the nature of the beast to do 'em just the same."

I could conjure in my mind an image of what West
Fifty-sixth surely had been like when I was a child. Brick
apartments, fifteen or twenty stories high, would have
stood at the avenues; along the byway proper old brownstones, converted livery stables, perhaps one or two small
lofts would have covered the lots. Cheap restaurants and
clubs would have frayed awnings extending to the
curbsides. The shopkeepers of the street would know you as
a customer as they'd known your mother; as they believed,
and you believed, they'd know your daughter.

Otsuka's building, one of those architectural marvels that
appear so sublime, alone upon the draftsperson's cold
screen, took up almost the entire south side of the block.
The tower, outlined with aqua neon, rose to unguessable
heights; the upper floors were cantilevered over the lower,
and so the street knew daylight for so brief a time at every
noon that were the city to be abandoned, grass would have
never sprouted between the cracks in the pavement. The
atrium within was as tall as the building enclosing it; the
empty elevators were as transparent bullets fired through
long glass guns.

"He's the only one has an office in here," Thatcher said,
eyeing the lobby guards within. "Check them out."

Gus identified our group; the guards directed us to enter
the center tube, their voices carrying heavy accents. As they
spoke among themselves they used a melodious Caribbean
patois. Stepping into the elevator I saw that its floor was as
clear as its sides. Gus stared at the ceiling, at the cables
along the sides; I'd never realized that he was scared of
heights. "I don't remember the Japs being real big on
affirmative action," Thatcher said.

Upon leaving the elevator we emerged in Otsuka's
reception foyer. The spoor of our own floor's decorators was
present wherever we looked: there were curved charcoalcolored sofas, dusty rubber plants overgrowing their ceramic pots, nubby walls with the feel of a three-day beard. The
seats of the sofas were cunningly tilted, so that those who
waited could not linger long without sliding off. An HD
monitor listed incoming figures from the Asian exchanges.
The receptionist, a willow-thin Japanese woman, stood and
bowed, something about her smile suggesting more of
surgery than of training. When she spoke, her voice came
from a place other than her mouth.

"Mister Otsuka expects you, Mister Dryden."

Taking a ballpoint from his pocket, he flipped it toward
her; the pen flew through her image, bouncing off the wall
behind. In the ceiling we discovered the lens that produced
her hologram.

"They're getting good at this shit," Thatcher said. "We
could put that to use somehow."

We stepped inside. Otsuka sat at his desk, his form
silhouetted by the window behind him. His view was that
of another window, across a space no wider than a tenement airshaft. Metal shutters veiled the opposite building's
eyes. Japanese prints of traditional design were hung on the
wall above a fireplace whose hearth seemed never to have
seen a log. Upon his broad teak desk were a bonsai tree and
a large amber lump; trapped within the amber was a tiny frog, preserved in mid-leap. Otsuka was as well-groomed
as a dowager's corpse. His companions assisted him in
rising, holding his arms when he tipped forward as if fearful
that in bowing, he would break.

"A pleasure, Mister Dryden," he said, singing with
ancient and unexpectedly resonant pipes. "Your presence is
a great gift."

"Good, 'cause that's all I brought," said Thatcher, sweeping out his hand. "My associates."

"Mine," said Otsuka. His two bookends made their
bows: they were mature men, with silver hair and rimless
glasses; their tailored suits failed to hide their mass, and in
the day's dim light they appeared to be carved from rock.
All guards present sized each other up. "I am sorry Mister
Leibson cannot join us today. We've worked so closely of
late you will understand me when I say I sometimes think
he must be one of my employees."

"I know the feeling," said Thatcher, rocking back on his
heels as if preparing to swing. "He runs a one-man show in
our operation. Keeps him busy."