The Zero (36 page)

Remy folded the credit card statement, put it in his pocket, and continued moving through the cubicles, each identical except for the photos on the desks. Eventually, he came to the end of this big filing room and found himself beneath one of the doorways. Overhead was a quote from The President, calling on his countrymen to “draw your strength from the collective courage and resilientness.” Remy pushed through the door and found himself in long corridor leading to his office. He walked down the quiet hallway, past each dark office. A faint
light glowed at the far end of the corridor. He walked past his office and kept going, until he got to the last door in the hallway, the one marked
SECURE
. A light was on inside, coming from a back room.

Remy took a breath and opened the door.

The outer office was dark and empty. It was a reception area, ornate, with a couch and a round desk and walls papered with framed magazine covers, certificates, and photos. A door to the back office was open a crack. Remy moved through the reception area and pushed the door all the way open.

The Boss was sitting behind a desk as big as a queen-size bed, lecturing his young ghostwriter, who was nodding and taking notes as he droned about “the best examples being the military and organized crime…”

The Boss looked up. “Hello, Brian.”

“What are you doing here?” Remy asked.

The Boss consulted his watch. “What do you mean? I’m right on time. You’re the one who’s late. Which reminds me—” He pointed his finger at the ghostwriter. “The first rule of effective leadership is to manage your time better than your money. Anyone can make money. Only leaders can make time.” The ghost took it down.

“How’d you get in here?” Remy asked.

“How did I get in…where?” The Boss looked from the ghostwriter to Remy and back. “How did I get into my own company?”

Remy took a step back. He looked around the office. There was a treadmill and a couch, a television and a DVD player. The walls were covered with photographs of The Boss posing with world leaders and touring The Zero with celebrities. In one photo, the Queen was knighting him. Next to that picture was a photo of The President and The Boss shaking hands, above a framed certificate from the Office of Liberty and Recovery lauding Secure Inc., for its “invaluable assistance in the War on Evil.”

“What’s the matter?” The Boss stood. “Are you sick or something?”

“Something.” Remy fell into a chair. His mind scrambled back through his previous meetings with The Boss, trying to rewind fragments of dialogue, to find some hint of what he’d known.

The Boss waved at the ghostwriter, who pushed his glasses up on his nose, gathered his things, and left the room.

When they were alone, The Boss leaned over his desk toward Remy. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “You’re not working too hard, I hope.”

“I work for you.”

The Boss just stared.

“I’m not…working for the government…on some secret case.”

“Are those agency bastards trying to steal you away from me? Or is it the Bureau?” he asked. “Look, Brian. I know you must be nervous because this job is ending, but this is not the end. After this, we’ll have plenty of other jobs. This is only going to create more opportunity. And I’m not going to forget your contributions, if that’s what you’re worried about. There is no shortage of opportunities for someone with your unique…” His pause seemed long, intentional. “Skill set.”

Remy pulled out the credit card statement he had taken from one of the cubicles. “We make money on this?”

The Boss sat up straight, stung. “You and I serve our country, Brian. We stepped in to do work that the government couldn’t.” The Boss tried another tack. “It’s just like we said in our proposal, Brian: in today’s world, there is no separation between civilian and soldier, between business and government. The private sector is the ultimate covert ops. We won’t win this war without using our greatest weapon—our free market economy. You said it yourself.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Remy offered weakly.

The Boss waved him off. “It doesn’t matter who said what. Things were said. I’m sure you said something.” He sighed. “Look, I know how
you feel. I do. Your work is coming to an end. Everything has been set in motion, and when it plays out the credit will go to other people. We will fade into the background again. I understand how that feels. But you and I will know, Brian. You and I…we’ll always know what we did.” The Boss reached in his breast pocket, pulled out an envelope, and slid it across the desk at Remy. “Here you go. Last of the seed money.” The Boss stood and began pulling on his coat.

Remy opened the envelope, saw the bundles of hundred dollar bills. His mouth was dry. “What if I quit?” he asked.

The Boss had turned to take his briefcase from the desk. He smiled.

“What if I don’t do anything else?” He thought of April. “What if I just…leave.”

The Boss considered him for a long time. “What’s this about, Brian? Are you asking for a raise?”

“No, I’m not asking for money. I’m quitting.”

“You’re going to quit your own operation, just as it’s coming to fruition? I don’t believe that.” The Boss smirked. “You’re free to do that, of course. You’ve done your part. But ask yourself this, Brian: If someone gets hurt because you failed to see this through to the end…can you live with that?”

Remy felt sick. He thought about Jaguar, about Markham and Dave and Buff. He thought of Assan on the boat and the way Kamal blamed that on the terrorists, al-Zamil on the sidewalk and how Dave blamed that on the terrorists. His head fell into his hands.

The Boss was at his ear, speaking in an insistent whisper. “I know this has been hard, Brian. I know you’ve second-guessed yourself…but do you honestly believe for a second that either one of us would be involved in anything that wasn’t entirely necessary? I’ll ignore for a moment the implication that you don’t trust me…. Surely you trust yourself.”

Remy didn’t say anything.

“Come on. What are you afraid of?”

“That I’m causing something bad to happen.”

The Boss laughed. “That you’re
causing
it? That’s a little grandiose, isn’t it? Look around you, Brian. We live in a divided world. You and I didn’t make that up. We didn’t make up the hole in the heart of this city, or the people who want to see our way of life destroyed. Whatever is happening now was going to happen whether we were involved or not. We’ve always known that another attack was inevitable.”

“But these guys all work for—”

“These
guys
…are our enemies. These guys have all engaged at one time in anti-American actions or thoughts or they wouldn’t be where they are,” The Boss said. “These
guys
hate our freedoms. You didn’t
cause
the seditious letters these men wrote or the conversations they had. We owe it to the people who died in this city to find animals like this, animals capable of this kind of barbarism, and stop them before they even think of it.” He seemed to be searching for a way to make Remy understand. “Look, a hunter can’t flush birds without sending a dog into the brush. My firm was hired to flush the birds. We provided a dog. A dog doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t worry about causes. He runs where he’s told. He barks. And then…” The Boss pulled on his coat. “He waits for ducks to start falling.”

The Boss shook his head as he buttoned his coat. “You want to know what caused this, Brian? All of this? I’ll tell you.” He looked around the ornate office, as if noticing it for the first time. “Ask yourself this: What causes hunger?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Hunger.”

THE GUINNESS
fit perfectly in his right hand, the red shuffleboard stone in his left. Remy looked around. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” he said.

“Where you supposed to be?” asked an old man leaning against the shuffleboard table. Remy stared at him—it was Gerald Addich, the old man whose planner he’d found in the rubble. His head was dominated by those huge ears and by the spit of gray curly hair lapping his forehead. He spoke in grave, third-generation Irish, his head bowed slightly forward, as if the goddamn thing were too heavy to hold up.

“I don’t know,” Remy said. “But there’s something happening…and I should probably be…” Be what? Remy was stumped.

“Always something happening,” said the old man. “But if you don’t know where else to be…this place is as good as any. Your throw, Cap’m Hook.” The bar was small and crowded, and Remy was playing shuffleboard with this ancient little man, so pale he was nearly translucent in his vintage suit with a ruffled white handkerchief and gold-crested slippers. “Anyway, you can’t leave till I answer your question,” the old man said.

“Okay.” Remy slid the stone across the cornmealed boards.

“Hey, now, that’s got a chance,” said the old man as the disc spun and slid to the end of the boards, hung there for a moment, and finally fell. “On a planet with more gravity. Ah, you greedy old pirate,” said the old man. “You do realize that you don’t score any points if it flies off the end. I’ve explained that, right?”

Remy took a drink of his Guinness.

“Okay, then,” Addich said. “What did you ask? Oh, right. You wanted to know how a man knows if he’s done the right thing? Boy, that’s a doozy.” The old man stuck his bottom lip out and his chin slid away into his neck. “I’m going to venture that he doesn’t ever know.” The old man leaned forward. “But while he may never know if he did the
right
thing…I’ll tell you this: He generally knows when he’s doing the
wrong
thing. But that isn’t what you were really asking.”

“It’s not?” Remy asked.

“No. I think what you’re really asking, if I’m not mistaken, is about this city.”

“The city?”

“Not just
the
city,” said Addich. “
This
city. Listen: I know that arrogant shit bird you work for thinks he invented the place, but he didn’t. I worked for Lindsay when he was Boss and every goddamned day was a disaster would’ve broke that bully you worked for. Sixty-six in Browns and the east, Negroes fighting the PRs fighting the Guineas, it was a war in there. A goddamn war. This little three-year-old, little Russell Givens—you remember Russell Givens?”

Remy didn’t.

“How could anyone forget Russell Givens? See, that’s the problem: We got institutional memory like a whore on her fourth marriage. This poor Russell, he gets shot one day from a balcony. We send fifty cops in and it’s like a tickertape parade on these poor flats, ’cept with bricks and shoes and flaming beer bottles.”

The little old guy skidded a stone down the boards and it came to rest squarely in the threes. “Look at that! Two more thick ones here, Mona!” he yelled, waving his beer. “For me and my troubled young friend—what’s your name again?”

“Remy.”

“Freddie. You know what just struck me, Freddie? Russell Givens, he’d be, what, forty-something today?” The old guy shook his head. “’Bout your age. Course everyone stays at the age they die. Russell will always be three. And I’ll always be old.”

Addich stared off for just a second. “So, yeah…Sixty-six? Transit workers go on strike…you wanna see a city shut down, put the bus drivers and subway workers on strike. Garbage men two years later, mounds of trash all over the Lower East, rotting peels, smells like the whole place died—the teachers in O-Hill, every union in the city woke up the same day and said, ‘Let’s shut this son-of-a-bitch down.’ Rock
aways, Bushwick, South J, Corona—everyplace bubbling and melting in the heat of summer and it seems like every block got poorer and more racist and more violent every day—city was burning up. And we had crazy Muslims then, too, the Five-Percenters killing Jews up the heights, till someone shot their boss.” He grabbed Remy’s arm. “City was a tinderbox. Your turn, kid.”

Remy slid a stone and again it rode the cornmeal to the end, hung on a little longer than the first throw, and then fell.

“Firemen had to carry sticks and guns to fires. People would set fires just to get a crack at beating a fire crew—used to steal their equipment, their pants, their trucks. We send in cops to protect the fire crews, and then we gotta send more cops to protect the cops we sent to protect the firemen we sent to put out the fire. We’re gettin’ three, four fires a day, and before too long the trucks just stop going to some neighborhoods…whole blocks burning down, and right in the middle of it, like some stupid weather girl telling you it’s hot in August, goddamn Kerner comes along to tell us the one thing we know: We got racist cops and crowded ghettos.”

The old man stepped forward and threw another stone, gliding it along the boards until it came to rest against his first throw. Just then a waitress arrived with two more beers. “Pay the girl, Bluebeard. And tip her like you had a chance with her.”

Remy handed the waitress a ten.

“And the hippies!” The old guy shook his head and looked up at Remy, his eyes like tiny polished stones. “Village looked like a goddamn circus. Radicals at Columbia running around yelling, ‘Against the wall, mothers—’ protests every day, protesters protesting protests. And not like today, these ladies in jogging suits marching on their lunch hour. We had ex-cons with bricks. Honest-to-God agitators. Cops didn’t know whose heads to crack, so they just cracked ’em all.” He shook his head. “Cracked every goddamn one. Your throw.”

Remy concentrated so that this stone wouldn’t go off the edge, and threw it about halfway, along the right rail. It drifted off the boards, hung a moment, and dropped.

“You have got to be the worst goddamn shuffleboard player I ever seen,” said the old man.

“Bottom line, I suppose it was garbage that killed Lindsay. And in the end it all turned to garbage. The whole city was garbage—schools bad, services bad, crime up, parks and subways a horror show, corrupt cops, and everything we did made it worse. Pay the sanitation workers more to get the garbage, and the teachers strike. Send cops to stop the protests and they beat the protesters, which causes more protests, so we gotta send more cops.”

He turned, grabbed Remy’s arm, and spoke in a low growl: “This city—is a big goddamn place, kid. A monster. You can’t imagine all the stuff that can go wrong here in a day. This was the city Lindsay ran, the city I had a part in running. For ten goddamn years this place was unlivable. It was a sinkhole. An ungoddamnlivable sinkhole. And then you know what happened? Do you?”