The 4 Phase Man (45 page)

On this rainy 3:00
A.M.
, there were about twenty of them gathered on the seventeenth floor. Thermoses of steaming liquid were being passed around; photographs of new babies, lovers, or victims being sought as well. As usual, the low hum of conversation stopped at the pleasant ding of the elevator doors as eyes casually turned to inspect the new arrivals.

“Shit,” someone whispered as Xenos and Franco stepped off.

They stood for a moment, taking in the room, their bodies still, their eyes never stopping.

An older man, one of the few who had been coming to Canary Wharf when it was still a real wharf, walked over to him. “Goldman.”

Xenos looked past him, into the crowd that had gone nervously back to their conversations.

“Who?” the man asked quietly.

“That would be me, I expect,” another man said from the crowd behind.

The old man shook his head as he stepped out from between the two. Casually all conversations moved to the sides of the wall-less floor, opening up forty feet of space between the two men.

“Well, look who we have here, boys. Our American cousin, come back from the dead.” Canvas regarded the two men carefully, missing no curve or lump in their clothing, no shift of weight between their legs. “I expected you yesterday,” he said quietly.

“Flight was delayed.”

Canvas nodded. “So?” he said after nearly a minute of silence.

Xenos just stared at him.

“I
Cinesi
send their regrets,
serpente,”
Franco said in an electric tone. “They’re going to miss the last payment.”

Like a tennis match, those in the room switched their attention to Canvas.

One of only two living Four Phase Men in the world.

“Pity,” Canvas said defiantly as he shrugged. “Their money’s just as good as anyone else’s.” He laughed, ignoring Franco, but never taking his eyes off of Xenos. “Just a poor boy trying to make a living, that’s me.”

All eyes back to the
other
Four Phase Man.

“Could be a real short living.”

Eyes on Canvas.

“An’ why’s that?”

Xenos unbuttoned his duster and the crowd took another step back. “Apple Blossom’s over. Time to settle accounts.”

For the first time, the bystanders smelled the putrescence of inevitable death settle over the room, floating between the two men.

Not yet decided which way to drift.

Canvas seemed genuinely nervous, but he quickly covered it with a professional braggadocio. “Apple Blossom was a joke from jump. I told the Chinks they oughta find themselves someone else.” He hesitated. “Who’s paying for the collection, Jerry? Certainly not this little Corsie?” He seemed relaxed, confident, completely at ease.

But he lowered his hands to his sides, split his weight evenly between his feet, relaxing his right arm. “No. You wouldn’t do it for money, not pure and noble Jerry Goldman.”

He shook his head sadly. “You must’ve started caring again, eh?” He frowned. “Pity,” he said with genuine emotion. “When
are
you going to learn, Jerry? No room on the bus for sentimentality.”

“It ends tonight.” Xenos paused, and when he spoke again it was in tones that dripped finality. “For the Corsi-cans, for the children, for you and me … it ends tonight. Nothing more to worry about. Ever.”

“I look worried to you, Goldman?”

Xenos sighed deeply. “You look … dead.”

Franco walked over to the Englishman, hatred and
murder in his eyes, and dropped a bloodred scarf to the floor in front of him. “Burn in Hell,
verme schifoso!”

Canvas smiled. “See you there, darling.”

Franco spit in the man’s face, then turned, stalking back to Xenos.

The two men (Xenos and Canvas—once Jerry Goldman, talented young musician; and Colin Meadows, aspiring artist) looked at each other, into each other, then Canvas nodded.

“Pas de mort?”
he asked quietly. “I always appreciated the romantic in you. Most didn’t, I know. But I found it one of your most attractive qualities, old son.” He picked up an end of the long scarf and tied it tightly around his left wrist.

Xenos walked forward slowly, picking up the other end of the scarf, tying it around his left wrist. “You won’t suffer. You have my word.”

“I don’t intend to.”

Xenos nodded, then spoke in a loud, demanding voice; directed not at Canvas, but at the rest of the crowd.

“Gentlemen, may we have this room.”

They filed out quickly. Franco the last to go, flashing lightning stares at Canvas, whose eyes remained locked with the man tied to him, less than five feet away.

And they were alone.

In the silence of the never finished floor, they contemplated their lives, their sins, their gained and missed opportunities. And they deeply weighed the mirror in front of them.

“Good-bye, Colin,” Xenos said as he pulled a ten-inch-blade Randall assault knife from his duster.

Canvas abruptly reached out with both hands, grabbed Xenos’s head with his hands, and pulled it close for a long hard kiss on the lips.

“The
only way for legends to die!”
he shouted. He stepped back, pulling out a fourteen-inch Bowie knife.

Xenos stepped back until the scarf was stretched taut between them.

And the dance began.

The snow was falling harder as the Lincoln stopped in front of the hamburger stand just long enough for the heavily bundled-up person to get in.

“Do you need to come in?” the driver asked.

“No,” the passenger replied. “I’m clean.”

“Do you need to deliver anything?”

“No.”

“Are you intact?”

“I’ve detected no changes in the flow across my desk, in my assignments. My phone was clean as of 1450, and I’ve detected no surveillance.”

“Very well.” Buckley pulled onto the lightly trafficked service roads that ran for miles from the rural airport. “How are you, Michael?”

“Good, sir.”

“It’s been an interesting time.”

The star witness at the Buckley Commission hearings on Apple Blossom nodded. “It has.”

Buckley concentrated on the rearview mirror. “It’s hard not being able to talk.”

Michael nodded his agreement. “After what’s happened, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it anyway.”

Buckley just studied the mirror. “Have you decided what you want to do?”

“Well,” Michael said as he considered, “they’re pretty
much leaving it up to me. But I think they want me to take the network commentator job with WIN for a couple of years, maybe the radio show too. Then run against Kingston for your old seat in 2002.” He paused thoughtfully. “They’ve done right by me so far.” He looked up at Buckley. “Been right for both of us.”

“Agreed.” The recently sworn-in attorney general frowned. “I’ve received new instructions, he said after a long silence.”

Michael was paying close attention. “I thought maybe that was it.”

“Our friends,” the slightly older man said softly, “believe we might carve out the right identity by engaging in the morals debate.”

“Gay bashing or church burning? Michael answered easily.”

“Neither, actually. They suggested that—given the mood in the country after Apple’s fall—we focus on the lack of morality in our educational system. How Jeff was a product of the overliberalization of our schools and such.” He hesitated. “Any ideas?”

Michael thought for a moment. “Teachers espousing the legalization of drugs, administrators allowing high school kids with babies to bring them to class, student athletes using steroids and such?”

“Sounds good.”

“Maybe I can link it with administrators and teachers who went to college in Europe, make it a grand Chinese conspiracy to destroy the moral fabric of America,” Michael said as he warmed to the idea.

Buckley held up a restraining hand. “Let’s not push that too hard.”He pulled up in front of the air terminal. “Your boss’s recklessness didn’t rub off on you, did it… Blossom?”

Michael smiled. “Not a chance … Cactus.”

“To the next few months, then.”

“To the eight years beyond that,” Michael added soberly.

“To the eight, then,” Buckley said as the man opened
the door, letting some snow in, “and to
your
eight after that.”

Cactus Blossom vanished, like a shadow on an X ray, into the snowy night.

And the possibilities beyond.

It was more atoll than island. A pacific paradise that mocked the winter that the rest of the world was shivering beneath. Warm gentle winds caressed pure white beaches, and crystalline blue water lapped at the few rocks, which added magnificent texture to the postcard scene.

“I hear they finally sell this place, but I no really believe it. They ask so much money!”

But the big man who stood solemnly in the bow of the small boat ignored the captain.

“You gonna build your house or maybe big hotel for all the rich fools pay to see this shit?” Again, no answer. “Hey! Mister! What are you, antisocial or something?”

But the glare that burned its way through the sunglasses the man wore above a bruised and scarred face was enough to silence the captain for the remainder of the trip.

In his life he had seen Pacific smugglers, Solomon Island pirates who would kill you for your fillings, and aboriginal islanders who still believed in cannibalism … and worse.

But, the captain decided, he would rather spend a weekend with any of
them
than anger the man behind the glasses.

They pulled up onto the beach, the captain was instructed to wait, and the man set off into the interior with only a backpack.

He walked for twenty minutes, following an inlet to a breathtakingly beautiful lagoon filled with fish, and flowers, and entente. He inhaled deeply, took off his glasses to prevent any filtration of the natural wonders of this Heaven on earth.

Here, the man believed, peace was a living thing. Still wild and untamed and undeterred by man’s stupidities and pettiness. Here peace was a force of such dominance and
majesty that all who lie in its wake must be healed and renewed. Here
was
Heaven on earth!

After ten minutes of taking it—inhaling it—in, the man shucked off his pack, reached inside, pulling out a simple aluminum box. He walked to the edge of the water, ignored the tears that were welling up in his eyes, and emptied the ashes and bone fragments into the water.

“Rest,” Xenos said softly. “Find some peace, Colin. He watched the water and wind swirl the remains, drawing it off into the paradisiacal setting.” For both of us.

Then he stretched out next to that pacific beauty, closed his eyes, quickly falling asleep.

The dream came right away, before his breathing could shallow and even; before his body could settle and unwind. As always, it came with blinding speed.

He stood in the sanctuary of the hundred-year-old temple. The men in their dark suits, gray beards,
tallisim
and
kepas
in place, swaying to their own rhythms as the ancient prayers were recited. An odd cacophony of English, Yiddish, Russian, and German mutterings rising out of them.

Upstairs, the women sat. More still, more controlled than the men; they prayed with equal fervor but less demonstrably, as was the tradition. The old women in black, the middle women in navy or pale blues, the young women and girls in a few bright colors. But all had their shawls over their heads, their hands cupped over their eyes, their mouths moving almost silently with their prayers.

Xenos would move among them, looking into their eyes, tasting their breaths, inhaling the women’s soapy-clean fragrances, feeling the submerged power of the men.

He stood for the longest time by his mother—who couldn’t have been there, since she had died years before—watching as she tried hard to suppress a grin of pride and, well, ownership, in her son below. It was one of the comforts in the dream. A mother that he had barely known approving, supporting, loving.

He would move to his father, sitting proudly, stiffly, on the dais next to the president of the synagogue. His freshly altered suit—worn only for the most special occasions—paling in comparison to the other man’s. But he prayed with more fervor, with an extra something that had been reserved for this moment when he would sit in front of the congregation. A proud father’s one and only embracement of his son’s accomplishments.

Xenos would reach out, try to touch the old man with the scar across his forehead from a soldier’s rifle butt. But he could never quite make it. Somehow, no matter how close the dream allowed him to move, it was never close enough. So his fingers would stretch and reach and beg; but never find the man whom he most wanted to please, whom he had most disappointed.

Then, quite unexpectedly, the old man reached out to him.

Embracing, nurturing him, tightly and warmly, for what seemed like centuries.

And as the big man slept beneath the palms in the warm pacific breeze, for the first time in ravaged years and a sordid adulthood, Jerry Goldman began to heal.

The Four Phase Man
would not have been possible without the generous assistance, support, and belief of many people; both now and in the past. Too many to thank individually. So I’ll take this opportunity to thank a special few; and through them, the rest.

Among the many are: David Schumaker; Hu Xiaoming; Sun Daqing; Paddy Jackson; Howard Tomb; Dr. Anthony Storr; Michael Newton; Steve Strasemeier, Sports Information Director at Annapolis; the wishing-to-remain-nameless aides from the staffs of Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi of California and Carolyn McCarthy of New York; Elizam Escobar and Guillermo Gomez-Pen a for their inspiration; Stan Ridgley, who has what it takes; Dr. O. K. Burger; Lieutenant Samuel Posner, LAPD (ret.); Dwight Chapin, Ron Sima, and Jack Liebling, who taught me to question everything.

Also, some special people who can’t bring themselves to sit on the sidelines, watching and bitching. The strong men and women of the former Two Dollar Bill’s in Hollywood; La Rotunda in Rio de Janeiro; Canary Wharf in London; and Brevin’s Hole in Las Vegas.

Their professions and life choices preclude my using their names, but their contributions to
The Four Phase Man
—both now and in the past—are very real and I thank them deeply.