The Zero (24 page)

Remy picked up one shoe. The stain was reddish brown, kind of glossy. He touched it and it flaked off in his hand. There was more of the reddish brown stain on the sole and on the heel. He turned the other shoe over and found more of the dried red stuff on the sole. Remy put the shoes back on the floor and backed away from them, rubbing his jaw. Okay. He looked outside. It was still dark. Must be three or four in the morning.
Okay
.

There were any number of explanations, he thought; it would do no good to go crazy imagining things again, trying to find some meaning. He went to get a dish towel from the kitchen. No, he thought, there were no good explanations. Remy looked over, to where his jacket was hanging on a kitchen chair. He pulled it off the chair and fumbled through the breast pocket until he found his wallet. He slid out the card, on which he’d written: “Don’t Hurt Anyone.” Below that, in his own handwriting, was written: “Grow Up.”

Brian Remy stood in the entryway, holding the card in one hand, the dish towel in the other, thinking that this couldn’t go on, but the moment and the thought slipped before he had a chance to wipe the blood off his shoes.

THE CAR
was familiar, a silver Lincoln, pocked and key-scratched, a shit bucket of a gypsy cab (a bit
too
ragged, Remy thought on seeing it again) driven by one of the men Remy had seen following him and Guterak, the man who had barged in on him in the restroom of the restaurant, a fat white guy in mirrored sunglasses, thick-necked, with a bushy mustache longer on one side than on the other, as if the thing had been trimmed by a blind man. Remy stared at the car again and understood why it hadn’t seemed quite right: It was a shitty old car, but
the tires were brand new. The back door of the car was thrown open. “Get in,” the man said.

Remy looked around. He was standing in front of an old six-story brownstone, not his building or April’s. The façade was covered with scaffolding, which was topped with razor wire and sided with plywood, which in turn had been tagged with graffiti. A tunnel beneath the scaffolding led to a doorway. He was the only person on the sidewalk. He crouched and looked inside the car. The driver was definitely staring at
him,
even though his black sunglasses hid his eyes. He wore a flannel shirt and old jeans—not so much what a gypsy cabdriver looked like, Remy thought again, but what someone thought a gypsy cabdriver might look like. He also wore the baseball cap that read BUFF. And, whether or not it was his name, it seemed to fit.

“Get in,” grumbled the buff man again.

“What?”

“Get your ass in the goddamn car, Remy,” said Buff. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Fair question,
Remy thought. He looked around and finally sank in. He had just settled into the worn vinyl backseat when the car bolted like a spooked horse. The back door swung closed and Remy lost his balance, falling sideways, and then righting himself as they swerved through traffic.

“So,” Buff said. “So…you wanna tell me what the fuck you’re doing?” He veered in and out of traffic like a particularly bad cabbie.

“What…I’m doing?”

“You’re making side deals with the agency, aren’t you?”

“What agency?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, Remy.”

“I’m not.”

The man stopped at a traffic light. He had a manila envelope and
he reached in and removed a photo. He tossed it into the backseat. Remy picked up the picture; in it, he was in a parked car with a thin, aristocratic man that he recognized at once: Braces. Caramel macchiato. Khakis.

“Dave,” Remy said.

“Yeah. I know his name, asshole,” said Buff. “What I want to know is what you’re doing meeting with him.”

Remy had no idea. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Buff glanced up at Remy in the rearview mirror, and with his mirrored sunglasses, Remy saw the man reflected in his own eyes. “You arrogant fuck.” Buff suddenly cranked the wheel without slowing and Remy slid all the way across the seat as the car squealed onto a side street without slowing. The car cut around a double-parked truck and seized to a stop, Remy’s hand curled white on the door handle.

The driver removed his sunglasses and slapped at the rearview mirror so that he was staring Remy in the eye; the man’s left eye was slightly crossed, on the same side his mustache was crooked. “Come on. What do I look like, a fuckin’ moron?”

“Well…” Remy said, and looked away from the man’s reflection.

“We had a deal, Remy. The bureau provides you with information…and you keep us apprised of what your gay little secretarial outfit is up to. I went to bat for you, Remy. How does it look when my director comes to me with these pictures of you meeting with this agency queer? How do you think that makes me look?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“What did you possibly think this would accomplish?”

“I don’t know…maybe help me find this girl, March—”

“Come on,” Buff said. “We both know that’s not what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to get a fuckin’ foothold. You’re playing the bureau against the agency, figuring that Dave would never find out you’re
working with me and that I’d never find out you’re working with him. Well, that, my friend, is a dangerous fuckin’ game. Do I need to show you the other picture I got in here?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Come on. You can’t guess what’s in here?”

“No.”

The man tossed Remy the manila envelope.

Remy stared at him in the rearview mirror before opening the envelope. The photo showed a man crumpled up on a sidewalk, a Middle Eastern man with a thick beard and short hair, wearing tan slacks and a white shirt. The man was facing sideways, his legs cocked as if he’d just fallen off a bike. A slick of blood spilled out from his neck and head.

“Remember him?”

“No,” Remy said. But he did remember the blood on his shoes and he swallowed.

“Oh, so you’ve never seen this guy before, is that it?”

“No,” Remy said again. “Never.”

“And I suppose the name Bobby al-Zamil doesn’t ring a bell?”

Remy covered his mouth. The lunch reimbursement report, the man who’d had lunch with March before she died, the man Markham was going to
work
. Remy looked back at the photo again. “Is that him?”

“Fuck you, Remy.” Buff sped off again and Remy fell back in his seat. “I told you
we
were working al-Zamil. So what? Then you happen to meet with an agency field supervisor, and the next thing we know al-Zamil gets depressed and takes a walk out his apartment window?” He caught Remy’s eyes in the rearview. “You tell your little friend at the agency that if he thinks this gets us off the case, he’s fucked in the head.”

“I swear, I don’t know anything about this,” Remy said. “I saw his name on a piece of burned paper that looked like Australia. That’s all.”

Buff spit laughter. “Australia. You’re a fuckin’ piece of work, Remy. You know that?” He stomped on the gas again and the car took off.

Remy stared at the photograph and covered his mouth. “I swear—”

“Look,” Buff said. “I’m gonna give you another chance—you’ve been getting us solid stuff, and we might need you.” He shrugged. “And we hadn’t turned al-Zamil yet anyway…. But you made me look like a horse’s ass. You gotta give me something to take back to the director.”

“I don’t know what I can give you.”

“Gimme your source.”

“My source for…”

“You’ve been one step ahead of us on this cell, Remy, and I need to know how. Give me the goddamn name of your source.”

“What name?”

“Yeah, and who’s on first, you smug son-of-a-bitch,” the man said. He put his sunglasses back on. “Okay, tough guy. Fine.”

The car’s tires chirped again as they skidded around another corner, and then the brakes jammed and the car came to a shuddering stop against the same curb where they’d started. “Get out,” Buff said.

Remy opened the car door.

The man turned and faced Remy for the first time, his face wide and uneven. He spun his cap around so that it faced forward, so that Remy could see the word
BUFF
again. The man held up his right index finger, which bent sideways at a thirty-degree angle. “You go ahead, play your little games. But if I was you, you calm, cool motherfucker, I would keep this one thing in mind—”

“HALLUCINATORY IMAGES,”
Remy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Rieux was saying. “What you’re describing is textbook PTSD. Visions. Stress-induced delusions. Dissociative episodes. Maybe even Briquet’s syndrome. Look—” He laughed. “I’m pretty sure you’re not working for
some top-secret department, investigating whether or not your girlfriend’s sister faked her death.”

“I’m not?”

“I don’t think so, Bri. Secret agents interrupting you on the toilet? Yelling at you in gypsy cabs, buying you lattes? Mysterious Arab men in wool coats?”

“That’s all…hallucinations?”

“Sure. Why not. It’s very common, Brian. I see it all the time.”

“You do?”

“Well…no, I haven’t
personally
seen it. But it’s all right there in the literature. Survivors can expect to experience delusions, persecution, paranoia. Delirium. Hell, after what some of you guys went through that day…I’m surprised you don’t have flying monkeys drive you to work.”

“So…the paper? The blood on my shoes?”

“You got a better idea?”

“I don’t know. It just…doesn’t feel like that. Are you sure?”

“Am I sure?” He spun in his chair and pointed at the diploma hung on the wall. “Do you think they give these out for masturbating? Well…” He laughed again and then assumed a serious face. “Listen. I don’t mean to be condescending, but some of the real issues you’re describing—not this fantasy stuff, but your son growing away from you, your inability to commit to a monogamous relationship, concerns about the ethics of your profession, alcohol abuse…this is pretty standard stuff for a man your age.”

“Are you saying,” Remy asked, “this is some kind of midlife crisis?”

“I don’t mean to minimize it. But you are a certain age. You’ve been through this severe trauma. Lost friends. Coworkers. And then, when you should be coming out of it, you had to suddenly abandon a successful career with the city because of back problems—”

“No, it’s not my back,” Remy protested weakly. “It’s my eyes.”

“No. I don’t think so.” The psychiatrist spun in his chair, opened a drawer, flipped through his files, and came up with a short report. “See, it’s right here.” He handed over the report, which read clearly
Disability due to chronic back pain
.

“No, this is a cover story,” Remy said. “For the work I’m doing.”

But Dr. Rieux pulled a prescription pad from his desk and scribbled something on it. He tore the sheet out and held it up for Remy. “Here.”

Remy read the prescription. “What’s this?”

“This will help,” he said.

Remy held up the medical report on him. “How come there’s nothing in here about the gaps?” he said.

“Gaps?” Dr. Rieux held out the prescription. “What gaps?”

“The
gaps,
” Remy said, as he reached for the prescription sheet and—

A MIST
hung in the air, fine droplets suspended as if on strings from the sky, distorting distance so that the grand house seemed miles away, across rollers of wet mounds and wild grasses. The house sat between two massive oaks; at three stories it was half their full height, with shutters and a wraparound front porch—a beautiful colonial country house with a fenced horse corral and barn beyond it. Remy stared at the house through the mist, which flattened everything and made the world appear sluggish and slow. Two hundred yards beyond the house Remy could see cars crawling along a narrow highway, slowing to make the switchback like mourners pausing over a coffin. It was dawn and he was sitting alone in this field two hundred yards from the house. He looked down. There were binoculars in his hands. He held them up and zeroed in on the top floor of the house. An attractive woman in her thirties was eating a cup of yogurt. Remy had a headset on—a small earpiece and mike—but he couldn’t hear anything. He watched the woman walk around the top floor, from window to win
dow. She was wearing workout clothes, bicycle tights maybe, with a collared shirt.

At one corner of the house he could see her turn from side to side, as if checking herself in a mirror, the cup of yogurt in her hand.

Remy dropped the binoculars and looked down at himself. He was wearing camouflage pants and a black jacket. He pulled a black stocking cap off his head and stared at it. Did he own a black stocking cap? A green camo backpack was spread out in the grass. Remy opened the backpack and began flipping through it. He found a notebook and pen, gloves, a semiautomatic handgun, and a box of Dolly Madison Zingers, like Twinkies with yellow frosting. Remy opened the box, took one out, and had a bite. It was good: spongy yellow cake with filling and frosting. Then he cracked the notebook. There were two listings written in the notebook, in his handwriting:
0645—light on. Subject Herote awake. Alone. 0724—Subject out of shower, dressing in workout clothes
. He glanced over at the backpack and saw, at the bottom…a full prescription bottle. Remy set the Zinger down, looked around the field, and then pulled out the bottle. He opened it and swallowed two of the capsules. He closed his eyes and curled up on the ground, hoping his psychiatrist knew what he was talking about and that this hallucination would dissolve. But with his eyes closed Remy could only see streaks and floaters, and when he opened his eyes he was still in the field. He fell back in the grass, discouraged.

“Fresca Two. This is Fanta One. Do you copy?”

Remy wedged himself into the deep grass, hoping the medication would kick in and this would all go away.

“I’m gonna make the call now.” It was Markham’s voice. “Wish me luck.”

Remy raised his head and looked all around the field. It was all still there, the house, the oak trees, the barn and corral, the highway behind, a creek bed to the right, lined with bushes, and on his left, a ridge, its
base ringed by shade trees whose branches moved in the soft wind like fingers on a piano.