The Zero (15 page)

Mahoud scribbled a name on the pad without saying anything.

“I need you to look at one more picture,” Markham said. He reached his hand out to Remy, who looked down in the valise and saw another print that had escaped him, up against the side of the case. He pulled it out. It was the picture of March Selios with Bishir. Remy handed it to Markham, who flicked it in front of Mahoud’s face. “Remember her, Mahoud? Bishir’s girlfriend, March. Do you remember her?”

Mahoud studied the face. “Yes. I think so. About two years ago. Bishir had…a lot of girlfriends. They run together.”

“Do you know why they broke up?”

Mahoud looked uncomfortable. “I don’t listen to wives’ chatter….”

“Do you know if he was still in touch with her?”

“No. I have no idea. Look, I have told you…Bishir has not contacted my family in more than a year. I am sorry.” He said this to Remy, who had to look away. “I cannot help you find him. Or her. I am sorry.”

Markham took the picture of March Selios back. “Okay. We’re going to check this out. I really appreciate your help. And you won’t mind if we contact you to help us out again, right Mahoud? I mean…if it means we can protect your family.”

“Who are you?” Mahoud asked again.

“Oh…one more question,” Markham said. “I couldn’t help noticing that you have a peculiar dish on your menu. Pecan encrusted sole. Is that a common Mediterranean dish?”

“We have a diverse menu. We also have Thai noodles and pizzas.”

“Sure.” Markham stared holes in the restaurant owner. “Diverse. Well, we’ll have to come in and try your food some time.”

Mahoud backed up and then turned and hurried away. Remy and Markham watched him go and then retreated to their car.

“Damn, you’re good,” Markham said, chuckling to himself. “When you turn on that silent thing…it’s really chilling. Mute cop, bad cop, huh?”

Remy opened the car door and sat down, trying to catch his breath, trying to remember…He felt sick. “Look, I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Markham stared at him a moment longer. The alley was quiet, the hum of the city seeming to be blocks away. “Okay,” Markham said finally. “Next time I’ll throw the rock and you can do the talking.”

REMY STOOD
on the curb outside his apartment and watched flakes come down from the sky, each one appearing lit from inside, each one like a cold secret. It occurred to him that maybe this snowfall was occurring in his eyes, and even as he quickly dismissed the idea, it seemed eerily plausible, that it could be snowing in his vitreous. He closed his eyes but the flakes were different, the familiar floating of tissue, up and down, flouting gravity; he opened his eyes and it was snowing down again. He felt for the stitches on his head, buried in his stubbled hair. He was about to go back inside when a stretch Town Car pulled up and double-parked in front of his building. The car sat there idling until finally the back passenger window lowered with a whir. Remy stepped closer, edging between two parked cars, to see The Boss’s oval face floating in the dark. Remy bent down to look inside and his eyes quickly adjusted. The Boss was wearing a tuxedo, and across from him sat the thick Police Boss, his own tuxedo tight around his neck as if it were a snake and he was a boar it was in the process of swallowing. He was telling some story but stopped grumbling when The Boss held up his hand. There were two other men in the car, one on each side, young guys with little round glasses, each holding a tape recorder.

“Hi, Brian,” The Boss said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier.”

The window went up and Remy stepped back as the door opened.

The Boss climbed out of the car, followed by one of the young guys
with the round glasses. “Let’s take a walk,” The Boss said, and pushed the door closed behind him. They moved down the sidewalk, shadowed by the stretch, which followed at their heels like an old dog, and the young guy, who walked a few steps behind them, holding out his microcassette recorder.

When Remy looked back at the young guy, The Boss looked over his shoulder at him, too, then he shrugged. “Ghostwriter,” The Boss said. The ghostwriter didn’t acknowledge the acknowledgment.

The Boss looked back at Remy. “So why don’t you tell me what this is all about, Brian?”

He hated when this happened. “I…called you?”

The Boss laughed. “Touché. Look…I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. The first time you called, I thought I should talk to the counsel’s office, to find out what…we could do for each other while I’m still technically on the public dime. But I’m here now. What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know,” Remy looked at the ghostwriter again, who didn’t meet his eyes. Then he said to The Boss, “I’m not sure…this thing I’m supposed to be working on—”

“Wait.” The Boss grabbed Remy by the arm and raised his hand as if he didn’t want to hear the rest. He nodded at the ghostwriter, who turned off the tape recorder and drifted back a few steps. Then he said to Remy: “Go ahead.”

“It’s just…” Remy struggled. “I’m having a hard time keeping…
track
of things. And I may have…” Remy looked back over his shoulder at the ghostwriter, who had his hands in his pockets. Remy leaned in close to The Boss. “I may have done some…really bad things, sir.”

The Boss pointed his finger at Remy’s face. “Look, don’t you for a minute doubt yourself, Brian. I know for a fact you haven’t done anything that wasn’t necessary. In fact, I’ve heard”—he paused—“
unofficially
…very good things…from the top. Do you understand?”
He mouthed a word that might have been
Pentagon
. “Your resourcefulness and commitment, Brian; you are striking a blow for…really taking some heroic…true leadership…showing that we won’t…I can’t begin to…”

Remy rubbed his temples.

“Wait a minute. I think I know what’s bothering you,” The Boss said.

“You do?”

“Sure. You feel like you’re alone.”

“Yes.”

“You think I don’t feel the same thing?” He waved his arm out at the city. “We took on their fear. And now they think they can do without us? Without us? They think anyone can just step in? After all I did for those frightened little
fuckers
?” He spat this last word, and then The Boss coughed. “No.” He glanced at Remy and seemed to realize that he’d shifted the discussion to himself. “They owe us, Brian. This thing we discovered that day…it has real value. It can make fortunes. Win elections. Wars. This thing…it could remake the world. And they owe us for that.”

The Boss looked around, at the quiet buildings. “Meantime, what does this all mean? That is what you’re asking, isn’t it?”

Remy wasn’t sure. “Maybe,” he said.

The Boss veered between parking meters to the limo, which came to a stop alongside him. The long car seemed to be a living thing, slithering, a long sleek black lizard guarding The Boss. He opened the car door and gestured to his ghost, who slid into the backseat in time to catch the end of an anecdote the police boss was relating about “…three Thai hookers and a bottle of rice wine.” The Boss listened for a moment, then walked back onto the sidewalk, until he was just a few feet from Remy.

“Look,” The Boss said quietly. “You need to have faith in what you’re doing. I’m going to give you two simple words to keep you going.
Two words that will give you some sense of where this leads, of what will save you and me, what will save the entire country. And it ain’t plastics.”

Remy waited for the two words.

“Close your eyes,” The Boss said.

“What?”

“Close your fucking eyes, Brian.”

Remy hesitated, and then closed his eyes and when he did he saw a kind of captured reality: a black screen with snowflakes falling and streaking, like crawling beasts beneath a microscope lens. Paper falling against blooming darkness.

The Boss said the two words: “Private. Sector.”

For a moment, Remy stood with his eyes closed, waiting for something else. He heard a car door close, and when he opened his eyes the limo was pulling away slowly, brake lights blinking once from the corner, their red eyes taking him in one last time before the big car turned a corner and he was gone—

SITTING ALONE
alongside a freeway, on the outskirts of a city, in the new FEMA Excursion, staring at a huge sign along the roadside. The Excursion was turned off. Cars were flying past him. He looked all around. There must have been a storm. The roadside was soaked, leaves pasted to the pavement. The sky was dark and seemed porous, like pumice, and Remy could still smell the rain. He looked all around his vehicle but didn’t recognize the stretch of freeway where he sat. He appeared to be in the suburbs of some town or city, a row of windbreak trees separating him from a development of homes and a mini-mall. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock. It was light outside. Two in the afternoon. He looked back at the sign, advertising one of the businesses in this mall. The top part was written in script letters: “Pure
Interiors.” The bottom half of the sign was a reader board with movable block letters. It read: “God Bless America. New Furniture Arriving Every Day.”

In Remy’s lap was an open pint of Irish whiskey. His hands were shaking. He took a drink and looked back up at the sign:
God Bless…New Furniture
. He stared at the sign until the words threatened to make some sense, then started the Excursion and began driving. He passed two more exits that he didn’t recognize, and after a time it was no longer important where he was, and he just drove.

“DO YOU
need to hear it again?” The man’s voice broke and then steadied, then quavered again. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.” He wore navy blue pants and a white T-shirt, his clothes dusted with flour, exposing thick, working arms and wrists. He was probably fifty, with a simple, good face, olive-skinned and framed by curly black hair, eyes rimmed with red and pearled with tears. Remy was sitting on a worn, slipcovered loveseat while the man stood above him in this small family room. They were surrounded by family pictures: young adults and children, senior pictures and vacations. Remy recognized March Selios in some of the pictures. The man in front of him, who appeared to be March’s father, held a telephone answering machine as if it were a holy relic.

Remy looked down at his notebook. He’d written the words:
I just wanted you to know that
. He’d underlined the words. After that he’d written,
Twenty minutes before
. And
Saying Goodbye?

“I’m sorry,” Remy said. “Maybe play it just once more.”

March’s father nodded, braced himself, and shuddered as he hit the big black button on the answering machine. A young woman’s voice filled the room. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Pop.” In a room behind Remy a woman sobbed. “It’s March. You must be on your way to work already. Um…
I guess…I just wanted to talk. I had kind of a…” On the machine, March Selios sighed. She sounded troubled. “Okay, well, that’s it. I just wanted you to know that I love you both and I…I just wanted you to know that. Well…bye for now.” A hint of sadness at the end, and then a mechanized voice: “Tuesday. Six fifty-eight
A.M
.”

“Thanks,” Remy said.

Mr. Selios’s face was tracked with tears. He wiped at them like they were mosquitoes he could kill. “She always went to work early, because she was working on things in Europe and the Middle East, other time zones. She called when she knew we had left for the restaurant. I think sometimes that she wanted to talk to us, but she didn’t want us to talk to her. We weren’t allowed to ask questions about her personal life.”

“The phone call was at six fifty-eight—?”

“Yes,” he said, “seven,
that
morning…” He covered his mouth.

Six fifty-eight in the city that morning. Forty minutes before. Just minutes after the technician said she got the call that agitated her. Minutes before she left her desk.

March Selios’s mother, tall and pretty, with a broad face and silver-streaked black hair, came into the room with a cup of coffee. The woman Remy had heard crying in the kitchen. She’d tried to compose herself but her eyes were red and swollen. “Here you are.” She set the coffee down on the table in front of him, which was covered with photo albums, school yearbooks, and letters.

“Thank you,” Remy said.

He picked up the coffee, and just then the wife fell into her husband’s arms.

They held each other, and the woman’s shoulders shuddered as she cried. Her husband cried too, but forced himself to do it silently. Remy was caught in the room because they were in the doorway and he was on the loveseat.

“Excuse us a moment,” Mr. Selios managed to say.

“Of course,” Remy said. “Take your time.”

They left the room and Remy rubbed his eyes. He put the notebook back in his pocket and looked around the room. Then he picked up one of the photo albums. There was a family picture: the parents, March, a young boy and another girl, an older sister who looked like a thinner, lighter version of March, pretty and dark-haired and familiar. Had he interviewed the sister and forgotten her? Or was it just that she looked like March? He flipped through the pages and came to the older sister’s wedding pictures. March was the maid of honor; the young brother, who shared their dark hair and eyebrows, was a groomsman. He looked at the young bride again.

March…

Remy’s throat went dry.
April?

He stared at the picture. It could be, although he couldn’t recall her face just now, only the back of her head, the girl he had—April? April Kraft.

He stood and looked around the room. There were pictures of the two sisters everywhere, but none of the back of her head…senior pictures in front of fanned chairs and phony grottos, candid photos of the two girls in footed pajamas at Christmas. March. April. Was that when they were born? Some new immigrant’s trick to make them sound American? And what was the brother’s name—June? Remy sat back down and rubbed his temples. Had he slept with March Selios’s sister because he’d wanted to, or because he’d wanted information? Was he genuinely interested in her, or…he didn’t want to consider the alternative. His throat felt salty and dry.