The Confessor (11 page)

The clink and clack of silverware and plates, the waitresses’ barked orders, the farrago of conversing voices . . . It was all a splendid symphony to Harry. He had called Geiger about having a meal, then found a diner a few blocks from Prospect Park – busy enough that two faces would be undistinguished but not so crowded they might have had to stand around and wait for seats. His cheddar omelet was not the equal of their old place on Columbus, but the bacon was crisp and hot, and the coffee had body.

He watched Geiger’s eyes move across a line of print on the Op-Ed page of the
Times
. That had always been the ritual. Harry would get his usual – and Geiger, black coffee. Harry would bring the paper and start with the arts sections, because Geiger only read the letters to the editor. Harry would do almost all the talking – about the work, the turnings of the planet, the remarkable, ridiculous acts of the people on it – and Geiger would respond with an olio of ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘I see’. It had taken Harry a long time to understand the man was neither aloof nor uninterested – and that his presence was, in fact, proof of some inexpressible form of commitment. They were a child god’s playroom creation – ill-formed clumps of clay, randomly mushed together, that had solidified into a single entity over time. Two hearts, two minds, a shared need.

‘Still just read the letters to the editor?’

‘I haven’t read a newspaper since our last breakfast,’ said Geiger.

Harry nodded. ‘And we went over my dossier for the Matheson job. Who knew, huh?’

Geiger looked up. ‘Who knew what, Harry?’

Harry sighed. ‘Never mind. Figure of speech.’

Geiger had read Harry’s research that day, and decided to take the job. Ten hours later, Hall had shown up with Ezra instead of his father – Geiger had knocked Hall out and taken Ezra away – and the back door of the universe was blown off its hinges . . .

Geiger picked up his coffee cup and held it before his lips in both hands with his fingertips, as was his custom.

‘They found me,’ he said.

‘
They
.’ Harry said it like the name of someone they both used to know. His tremors of surprise were minimal. ‘Fuck. How?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I made sure no one followed me when I came here.’

‘What’re you going to do? Disappear?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Geiger took a measured sip. ‘They wanted me for a job. They’ll be back. It may come down to how many times they’ll take no for an answer.’

‘Before what? Before they find a way to make you say yes?’

‘That won’t happen, Harry. I told you. I’m done. For good.’

Harry tapped the fork’s tines on the plate’s edge a few times.

‘Geiger . . . If you leave, I want you to—’

‘There’s no reason to discuss it now.’

Harry started making a circular sculpture of the remains of his home fries with his fork. Nothing seemed to possess a dimension of length anymore. A life, a doctrine, a relationship, a conviction. The assumption of a thing’s continuance was foolhardy.

‘Listen, Geiger . . . I’m going out of the country for a while. For a week, maybe. Leaving tonight – with Matheson. Veritas Arcana stuff. We got an e-mail with—’

‘Harry, I don’t need to know what it is.’ Geiger took another sip, then put his cup down. ‘You said “We”.’

‘Huh?’

‘You said, “We got an e-mail . . . ”’

‘Did I?’ Harry broke off a small chunk of bacon and popped it in his mouth. ‘Guess I’m kind of jazzed. Feels like the old days.’

‘When you were a reporter.’

‘Yeah. Haven’t felt like this in a long time. Matter of fact . . . I think you coming back from the dead has something to do with it.’ Harry took a swig of coffee. ‘Listen . . . this trip . . . Hard to tell what it might be like.’

‘You mean dangerous. A setup.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Then why are you going, Harry?’

When Harry’s blue smile came out, Geiger was waiting for it. It was the emblem of his bedrock sadness, the thing always hovering about him like cobwebs in an attic. Harry reached down to the seat and then put an eight-by-ten manila envelope on the table.

‘If anything happens to me. The keys to the apartment and my safety deposit box, copies of the title to the apartment, names and instructions on what to do with it all. Just in case.’

Geiger opened the folder, pulled out a few papers, put them down before him and stared at the top sheet. It had a few typed paragraphs on it. His fingertips began a syncopated roll on the sides of his cup. He looked up at Harry.

‘Who is Christine Reynaud?’

Harry felt as if he was watching a DVD from one of Geiger’s sessions. The unchanging stare, the calibrated cadence in the question. The utter stillness of the man.

‘We don’t have to go into it now.’

‘If you might not come back, then I think we do.’

Harry sat back. ‘Remember the first time we sat and talked? The bar on Broadway?’

‘Yes.’

‘I had a hundred Wild Turkeys and told you my life story.’

‘Some of it, Harry. Not all of it.’

Harry sighed. ‘Right.’

Geiger’s fingers finished their dance and settled on the tabletop. ‘You told me about growing up, being a reporter at the
Times . . .
’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Then you talked about your drinking, your demotion to the Obituaries. But you didn’t talk about what happened in between. All you said was – “You know that sensation . . . when you feel like you’ve hit bottom, and you realize you’re right where you belong?”’

Harry grinned – but there was nothing funny about it. His stomach started up like a clothes washer. He patted his pockets for a Pepcid but found none, and took a long slug of water to try and pre-empt the acid’s ascent – but he had no strategy for fending off the vision. As is so often the case, the gods had decided to dabble in mayhem on a most ordinary day . . .

He had been at his desk in the old Times Building when she’d called. After a moment checking the elevators’ status he’d raced down eleven flights, five steps at a leap. The traffic in Times Square was a fused chunk of honking steel and rubber. He’d stood paralyzed, considering the capriciousness of rush-hour subways, and then gone into a mad sprint – west to Ninth Avenue, then north sixteen blocks, gasping ‘S’cuse me!’ and ‘Outta the way!’ He remembered the explosive backdraft of scorched air in his lungs as he skidded to a stop inside St. Lukes-Roosevelt and took in a huge breath . . .

Harry put down his glass and met Geiger’s gaze.

‘I had a child once,’ he said. ‘A little girl. With Christine.’

The only movement in Geiger’s face was an involuntary dilating of the pupils. Harry sighed again. It was the sound a priest would hear through the curtain of the confessional. He shoved the image back into the past, and leaned forward.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about something the last few days. About Ezra. He’s hurting. He needs to know, Geiger. He really needs to know.’

‘We talked about this. In the long run, he’ll be better off not knowing.’

‘I don’t agree.’

Geiger’s hand started up again – a finger-roll on the table, pinkie to thumb. ‘Harry . . . I know what works—’

Harry’s hand suddenly shot out and smacked Geiger’s flat.

‘Don’t say you “know what works” best for you! I’ve heard you say it a thousand times and I still don’t know what the hell it really means! Jesus . . . Just once – just once I wish that you’d . . .’

Harry slid his hand away and sat back, shaking his head. Geiger remained exactly as he was. It was Harry who seemed surprised at the outburst.

‘Go on, Harry. What is it you wish that I would do?’

Quintessential Geiger. Uninflected, a stranger to attitude, a living Rorschach blot to the listener. To a Jones it could paint Geiger shades of ominous, patient, arctic, wise. To Harry, it had often felt like a glimpse of a child lurking beneath the surface.

‘Listen . . . Maybe it works best for you – but it doesn’t work best for Ezra.’ He tapped the envelope. ‘His iChat is Zman. One word, Z – M – A – N. It’s in here, with his address and cell. You saved his life – but he thinks you sacrificed
yours
to do it. He needs to know you’re okay. So . . . Either you tell him, one way or another – or I will when I get back.’ Harry stood up. ‘Time to go. Got things to do. I’ll be in touch when I get back.’

Geiger nodded, once – and watched Harry walk to the door and step out of sight. His eyes shifted and fixed on the shiny nebula of oil that floated on the surface of the coffee left in his cup. The diner suddenly seemed louder, and each clink and uttered word etched its distinctive mark on the aural swirl. Some tiny filament fired in the part of his brain that sheltered its unremembered secrets – and he heard a sigh, dulcet, mournful – but couldn’t be certain whether it came from a nearby table or booth, or a place that defied concrete definition. Then the waiter was at his side.

‘Would you like something else?’ asked the waiter.

Geiger’s right forefinger started a solo tap on the table, as if he had found a beat within the sound. He closed his eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

The early morning lines for non-Europeans at Paris Orly passport control were long. Harry still had half a dozen weary travelers in front of him while Matheson had already breezed through the section for nationals with a phony French passport, a perfect accent, short gray hair and a salt and pepper goatee. Harry had a carry-on duffel, and his laptop and private software – on disks sporting labels of albums by the Allman Brothers, R. Kelly and Coldplay – were in the scuffed leather portfolio he’d had since he was a reporter at the
Times
.

He looked at the ‘Thomas Jones’ passport in his hand. Six years ago, Geiger had taken a gig in Cancun – some bad blood in the luxury condo business – and they had acquired quality forgeries for the trip through Carmine. He remembered Carmine handing him the documents, patting him on the back and saying, ‘Harry . . . take good care of my boy . . .’ – as if Geiger, the man who broke the wills of killers and kings, was a naïf who needed looking after. And Harry remembered looking at Carmine’s hard, cobalt eyes and thinking –
If anything happened to Geiger, this guy would rip out my liver and make me eat it
.

The immigrations official was a woman in her twenties – pale and stiff-backed in her crisp blue shirt, with a short frown she clearly hadn’t had much time to earn. Maybe they taught you how to wear it at border police school. Harry handed the passport to her.

Her eyes went from his picture up to Harry’s face, then back down.

‘Monsieur Jones . . . visit in France why?’ she asked in poor English.

‘To see an old friend.’

‘In Paris?’

‘Yes. That’s right. For a few days, maybe a week.’

He faked a yawn and sneaked a glimpse at the security camera on the cubicle wall behind her.

There was a fuzzy squawk that seemed to come from a few spots simultaneously. Harry’s head did a ninety and saw a uniformed man across the area put his two-way radio to his ear. Then Harry picked out two other blue-shirts doing the same. The men looked up as one – directly at Harry – and started walking toward him. He tried to turn off the spigot flooding him with fear.

‘Ne bougez pas, monsieur,’ said the police woman. And she made a gesture commanding him not to move.

Harry turned back to her. The frown did a little twitch, and caused Harry’s internal screws to tighten from head to foot.

The trio were five feet away and there was no place for Harry to go. He watched them coming for him, one stride quicker than the last, and the tallest brushed against him as they went past. Harry turned and watched them stop at the next line and kneel around a silver-haired old woman who was lying on the floor. She might have been a fainter. Or maybe she’d suffered the heart attack Harry was certain he was about to have. The men exchanged comments, then gently helped the woman into a sitting position.

‘Bon,’ said his official. Harry’s sweat had glued his shirt to his back.

‘Bien, monsieur . . .’ She stamped the passport, held it out to him, and her lips curled upward into one of the sweetest smiles Harry had ever seen. ‘Paris! Ah, Paris!’

‘Thank you,’ he said, took the passport, grabbed his belongings, and walked through. Matheson was leaning against a wall twenty yards away waiting for him by the baggage claim area. He picked up his bag and they headed for the exit through the ‘nothing to declare’ customs gate.

‘We check into the hotel, then I’m going out to look at places for us to meet him. Give him some options, let him choose – so he doesn’t get spooked.’

The anonymous e-mailer had responded within an hour to Matheson’s message. He would meet them in Paris. Matheson had made plane and hotel reservations – coach and three-star. Not that money was scarce – nine years ago Matheson had inherited sixteen million dollars when his hedge fund manager father suddenly dropped dead – but except for Ezra’s child support every penny was considered part of the Veritas Arcana budget, and first-class seats and luxury suites were not only expensive, they were conspicuous.

Glass doors sensed their approach and slid apart, and the two men stepped outside toward the long line of cabs. Matheson checked out the sky. The early morning sun was a white smear behind a slow-marching phalanx of clouds.

‘Sixty percent chance of rain tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Does that matter?’

‘It might.’ Matheson moved on towards the cab at the head of the line. ‘Taxi!’

The man lowered the
Herald Tribune
’s crossword puzzle and watched the men get into the back of a cab. He brought his cell phone to his lips.

‘They are getting in a taxi. Come up, not too fast.’ His English had a creamy gloss of a French accent on it.

‘On my way,’ came the reply.

As the taxi pulled out from the curb a silver Citroen DS4 glided up past the row of cabs and pulled over, and the Frenchman slid into shotgun.