The Vaults (12 page)

Feral flashed back to the previous night and the moment of near intimacy that they had shared. Nora looking at him from the stage, their eyes briefly holding each other’s. She knowing that he was not just another patron and he sensing her knowledge. It was brief. That was one thing he felt they shared—a heightened awareness of the motives and instincts of
others. From that quick look could she possibly have gleaned what lay in store?

Now that she was sitting and absorbed in her reading, Feral got to his knees and looked in. Although he was plainly visible, he knew that she would not look up. He watched her as she read—placid and beautiful. She moved her lips, he noticed, ever so slightly, and he wondered, if he put his ear right up to them, whether he could hear the words she was reading.

A subtle change in her posture sent Feral again to his back. He held the mirror up and saw her rise from the couch and walk to the next room. He stood up and walked to the edge of the fire-escape landing. He sat on the railing and swung his legs over so that they dangled fifty feet above the alley. A narrow concrete ledge, perhaps two or three inches wide, delineated each floor on the building. Twenty feet in front of him was the wider ledge beneath a window. He twisted so that his stomach pressed against the railing and lowered himself to the level of the ledge. He grabbed the ledge with the fingers of his right hand, then swung his body and grabbed the ledge with his left hand as well. Hanging from his fingertips, he edged his way along until he was at the window ledge, then he pulled himself up so that his chin was even with the bottom of the window. It was her bedroom, he saw, and it was empty. He pulled himself up so that he was kneeling on the ledge. He shook the window slightly and determined that it was locked. He pressed his ear to the window, trying to hear movement inside. There was nothing. He thought that she was probably back on the couch, reading. He fished a thin file from his pocket, slid it up between the top and bottom window frames, and jimmied the lock.

Putting equal pressure on both sides of the window frame, he slowly pushed the window open. It made the slightest grinding sound, but nothing that would be heard in another room. When he had it two-thirds of the way open, he slid through headfirst. Once he was all the way in, he lay still for several seconds listening. Again, there was no sound. He got back to his feet and pulled the window slowly closed.

The enormous bed had a white canopy and thick, white blankets lying disheveled. He walked silently past and held his mirror in the door’s threshold to get a look into the next room. She was on the couch, facing away from him. He couldn’t see a book from his vantage point but assumed that she was still reading. The living room opened into a foyer to his right.
He stepped into the living room. Nora was sitting with her back against one of the arms of the couch. Her blond hair was pulled up and he saw the graceful lines of her neck, pink with tiny blond hairs. She had a mole on the back of her neck, and this imperfection thrilled him.

He walked slowly, taking a step, then stopping for a beat before taking the next. His heart rate was down to under forty beats a minute. His breaths were deep and infrequent. He was silent. His concern was not that she would hear him but that she would sense him. Feral controlled every aspect of his presence that he could, but his body was ninety-eight degrees and it did displace air, and his movements did alter the flow of air in a room. A person could sense these things and he knew he was vulnerable. Yet he did not allow this knowledge to escalate to apprehension. Such was his calm that he paused briefly to steal a glance at what he realized now was a copy of a Vermeer, executed by a mediocre painter. The painting was poor—lacking grace. For a horrible moment he wondered if maybe she had painted it herself. But he dismissed this. It was not possible.

He came to the foyer now and she had not moved except twice to turn the page. On a mahogany table with legs carved to be lion’s paws sat a gray ceramic bowl with three sets of three keys. Each set was identical, held by identical rings. With his thumb and middle finger he pulled one of the sets slowly from the bowl. The keys converged at the lowest point of the ring with a slight sound, and Feral froze, waiting for Nora’s scream. But there was nothing. Once the keys were clear of the bowl, he carefully cupped them in his left hand and turned back to the living room.

Nora put her book down, and Feral flattened himself against the far wall, out of her line of vision. She swung her legs off the couch, stood up, and stretched, her hands reaching for the ceiling. Feral watched, transfixed, at the intimacy of the moment. He became aware that he had prepared himself for the likelihood that up close she would not live up to the image of perfection that she projected onstage. This had turned out to be wholly wrong. The only thing imperfect about her was the mole on her neck; like the imperfection that the ancient Greeks would leave in their crafts so as not to offend the gods.

She walked around the couch and to her left, out of sight. The kitchen, he assumed. This time he moved quickly, but no less silently. He crossed the room in six long strides and was at the window. He unlocked it with his thumb. From the kitchen he heard the sound of ice dropping into a
glass. He slowly pushed the window up. It moved smoothly, as if it was often opened. He stepped through and pulled it back down again, then flattened out on his back with the mirror in the air. Within seconds she had reentered the room carrying a tall glass of what looked to be whiskey on the rocks.

Red Henry did not need to know the language to sense that the Poles were coming around. There were smiles now, and an atmosphere of fraternity. Anticipating an agreement, he had arranged for a contract-signing celebration in three days’ time. He hated the events that always seemed to go along with these deals, but the foreigners loved them. It seemed to fulfill some idea they had about America, and if it helped at all, Henry was willing to grit his teeth and indulge them.

They were touring one of Block’s factories. This one made stoves. They walked up and down aisles of assembly-line laborers, the Poles chatting with the interpreter and Henry smiling when it seemed appropriate but otherwise keeping to himself. His secretary, Peja, trailed behind, talking in hushed tones to some bureaucrat whose name Henry could not remember but whose breath was rancid with garlic. Every once in a while, for reasons that Henry could not glean, the Poles would want to stop and inspect some aspect of the stove assembly. They would murmur among themselves, and Henry would look to the translator without interest, and the translator would shrug as if to indicate that the conversation was not one Henry should worry about.

What Henry did worry about was the strike at Bernal’s plant. He had debated in his mind the wisdom of bringing the Poles over to watch his police break it. He assumed that businessmen would appreciate a government that enforced their interests when necessary. But you could never tell with these goddamn Europeans. They could share your values but not your methods, or your methods but not your values, or both or neither. And who knew how things came across in translation? There was something indefinable about the translator Henry disliked, which was possibly a good sign, because Henry was generally sure about what, exactly, he didn’t like about a person. Still, there was just no way of knowing how good he was. How
tactful
.

So they were at Block’s. About as far away from Bernal’s as he could get
without looking as if he was trying to shield them from the strike. A thought came to him about how to pitch the strike to the press, and he turned to tell Peja, only to find, to his intense annoyance, that Peja was no longer there.

It was remarkable, he thought, how clean the cavernous factory was, yet, how dirty the workers. How could that be? One of the Poles, a squat man with a mustache that hung below his jawline, was looking at Henry expectantly. Henry turned to the translator.

“He wants to know if Block stoves are the best you can get in America.”

Henry smiled through the idiocy of the question and, looking at the Pole, told the translator, “Tell him that the quality of American stoves is such that people debate which is the best. For myself, I prefer Block.”

Henry listened to the translator spew a rush of Polish and, hearing the one word he expected to understand—“Block”—returned to his thoughts.

“Mayor?” It was Peja.

“What? Is the strike broken?”

“The strike? It, uh, it may be. But this is something different. Polly called on the special line.”

Henry felt his stomach clench.

“She left a message. She said another gink came by today, asking about the Prosnickis. Specifically Casper Prosnicki, she said.”

“Jesus Christ. Who the hell was it?”

“She said his name was Poole.”

“Christ, Christ, Christ. Did you get in touch with Feral?” Henry’s volume was rising.

“We’re looking for him.”

“Get me Smith.”

“Smith’s with the Anti-Subversion Unit out at Bernal’s.”

Enunciating each syllable carefully and distinctly, Henry said, “Get me goddamn Smith now.”

Peja scurried away, leaving Henry to face the Poles, who were watching him with interest. He tried to smile benignly, but clearly the Poles weren’t buying it.

The wind rarely came out of the northeast, but when it did, it sometimes bore the ash spewed from the plants across the river. On days when the atmospheric conditions were right, the ash would fall on the northeast corner of the City like gray and black snow. As they drove in the squad car to the headquarters of Bernal’s Capitol Industries, Frings noticed the soot, initially falling lightly, but increasing in intensity as they progressed farther into the Hollows. It looked like a photographic negative image of a snowstorm, the snow darker than the ground it fell on. Was this odd because he was high or was it actually as strange as it seemed? The policemen did not seem to take much notice.

They parked at the end of the block, and Frings saw the chaos that the strike had become. The police seemed to be outnumbered nearly two to one by the picketers. In some parts of the block, in open fighting, picketers were swinging sticks that had held their ragged signs as the ASU retaliated with billy clubs. The gray-suited ASU were getting the better of it, and a couple of dozen of the strikers lay or knelt, stunned and bleeding. In other spots, picketers were lined up with their hands against the wall and their backs to the cops, who were systematically cuffing them and making them sit. All the while, ash fell, covering the sidewalks, cars, and the people themselves. Blood revealed itself as darker patches of ash on people’s faces and the sidewalks beneath them. Frings, who lacked firsthand knowledge, imagined it looked like some wretched battlefield on the Western Front.
Somme in the City.

He glanced at Reynolds, who seemed hesitant to enter the mêlée. “This seems a little extreme,” Frings said.

“The ASU is that way,” Reynolds said, motioning two uniforms toward the line of strikers waiting to be cuffed. Frings stood and watched for what seemed like several minutes, getting the description for the paper clear in his head. The ash was making breathing difficult.

Capitol Industries’ headquarters was a nondescript six stories of concrete
and brick. Frings could see the silhouettes of onlookers in the windows of the top floors. Bernal would be among them. That was where his scoop would be found. Not out here where the
Gazette
doubtless had another reporter, not to mention the
News
and the
Herald.

He moved toward the front door, holding his press pass in front of him like a white flag. Little pockets of order were carved into the chaos where the ASU had strikers in cuffs or lying facedown on the ground. It was, in his intoxication, slightly unreal to Frings, and even a stray elbow that caught him in the mouth was not enough to jar him from his sense of wonder—like a child’s in a fun house.

The front door was manned by two men in ASU uniforms, standing stiffly, their hands resting on their holstered pistols.

“Frings. With the
Gazette
.” He held his pass in the taller guard’s face. The guard looked across Frings to his partner, who shrugged.

“All right,” he said, and stepped aside to let Frings in. Frings went through the doors, then down two steps to the lobby, which was appointed with chrome and mirrors and a green-tiled floor. Beyond the empty reception desk was a bank of elevators. Only one operator was at his post. Frings guessed that employees had been removed from the lobby so they were not a temptation for the picketers.

“I have a meeting with Mr. Bernal.”

The operator gave him a fatigued look and pulled back the gate and then the elevator door. Bernal’s office was on the top floor, and the operator did not make small talk during the brief ride.

Off the elevator now, Frings faced a floor of empty oak desks that showed signs of recent use—stacks of papers, coffee mugs, telephones. Then he heard voices and followed the sound to find the office’s occupants at the windows watching the fracas below. He recognized Bernal from pictures—fat and dark, with a thin, meticulous mustache over a small, weak mouth. Bernal was talking to a graying woman in hushed, yet intense tones. Other people at the windows strained to listen while keeping their eyes focused on the activity outside.

Frings ambled over to Bernal, getting close enough that Bernal looked up. “Yes?” Malice wasn’t in his voice as much as annoyance. Frings understood, given the circumstances.