Marek Hussar had stood in the master en suite the night of the fifteenth. He’d taken the Parkway back from his maneuvers in the Central West End, and he’d pulled off onto DeBaliviere and waited for the Mercedes to come back along—sniffling instinctually after him, lifting a leg for every oil stain and coolant dribble of the way—and quietly and from great distance he’d followed it back to the parking garage at the Ritz, Clayton; he’d gone in after it and noted its plates and VIN and particulars. And then, that evening, he’d gone up into the en suite, with the lights put out, and he’d looked out at the house backs of Greenway with field glasses and double old fashioned for whisky, and the bottle. He’d watched for hours, for opportunity, for signs, and when he’d finished with vigils—this, and all others beside—he’d gone to bed, had put the car nose-out in the garage, and looped bells over the handles of the entries, turned the lock of the bedroom door and taken the Barrett and its sudor of powder-flash and gun oil, and full charge of magazines, to bed.
In the morning he’d blown the moldy decay of civilization from his nose—black, earthy and contemptuous, and he could not stop tasting it: a scent of florid bacterial end times, of soil distillates and corporal depredation—solvent of the very agents of undoing. Greed gnawing its own micturated tail: this was the smell. He’d cleared it from his nostrils with glycerin soap and cleaned the Barrett and had espresso crema and aromatic volatiles, and music. He’d prepared the autoinjector pen with extraordinary care, and had gone with a modest cache of supplies, to the gym.
He’d stowed his things in the locker room—down the passage, along the damp concrete, chipped and slippery epoxy, sloped and drained, and amenable to the hose as a stable—and for Hussar—at all times a space persisting in want of it. He’d staked out the treadmills and cable-rows, the dumbbells in their five and fifteen pound presentations, the pool, and the men’s locker. That day, at first, and for what seemed a term of afternoons to follow, Hussar had made a place of routine for himself in sight of these. And, one by one, this radius of midday had begun to pile on, until, Sunday, March 20th—when Howard Charles Foster had come to swim.
Foster had swung through the doors in some imagined triumph, Hussar had thought—a pied piper, soon to be followed by all the rats of Hamelin. He hadn’t spared a moment for Foster’s emotional complexion—the rudder setting of his mental state—but whatever he might have conjured, this was manifestly apart from it. Foster had floated through the doors and past the counter at reception, and off to the lockers to prepare; and Hussar was impressed by this show of mood—this mania of witless delusion, or this fantastic turn of resilience, whichever it may be. Foster had a look of deep and recent haunting in the shadow of his features, but as one in chipper and animate recovery: a convalescent for whom sugar-wafer and words have expiated and exorcised. Foster appeared at the treadmills and at the other stations of his way before he’d entered the pool. Hussar had gone and lain in wait there. He’d anchored himself to the floor with dive weight ballast and the motion of his watch face and the slow stroke of his heart. And then he’d immerged. He entered the tank from above, pierced the mirrored veil of ceiling with a toe, a foot, a shower of effervescing air that lifted away on impossible winds. And now there, he was a body lowered to the earth, eased in low gravity onto the pale floor of the world; a pair of legs, hard-white and knobby, like beanstalks rising off to break the sky. He stepped in and down the grade and clapped at the water and eased back in baptismal recline. And Hussar sat in crocodilian suspense, and watched him—the languorous chicken hide and bandy, articulating wishbones, the cold meat to be tonsured down to ivory. Hussar had watched this approach, and then, at an interval of his choosing—at the trigger of his intuition—he’d risen, come up, pushed off the bottom and ruptured the placid lid of the pool. He came up in a motion and toss the weight on the deck and cleared his nostrils and set the bezel of his watch to mark Foster’s forty minute routine—and with a glimpse of him startled and static, he climbed from the water and left it for the lockers.
There, he dried and dressed and collected a slender steel rod from his things. Foster preferred a locker, and he identified it by number, and had intended to wrest the padlock from the stamp-steel catchings with a twist—but it wasn’t necessary: in his bliss or stupor, Foster hadn’t bothered to fix a lock at all, and from it he swiftly removed effects: Foster’s wallet, identification cards, key ring, and phone. He readied his own materials, prepared the autoinjector pen, and when the hand swept at last to the bezel mark at forty minutes, he stood, and with careful measured steps began his progress toward the door. A bag on his shoulder and a towel over his arm, he counted these steps and watched his stride closely. He’d worked a place to start, a time to stand and turn to leave, a length and speed of common step approximating Foster’s shambling gait returning from the pool. He’d calculated the distance by time, by step and cadence and carriage; and so not merely to be loitering, if the intervals were right they should arrive to enter the narrow, dim, and crooked passage, from opposite ends, at once.
But Foster was there. Hussar made the mouth of the passage; entered the eternally darkened hall, his body mechanics now liberated by sight. Somehow, already Foster was there, premature; he’d rushed with unease or left a moment early—cut short his routine by fractions, some foreboding, by some startling emergence of a man from the depth of an empty pool. He stood stopped mid-passage, shackled to the floor by some emerging quaver of thought. Hussar imagined he could see it—the thought bubble forming and its punctuated ellipsis, and he meant to lance it—approached now sinuated with false ease, elastic with a javelin thrower’s first steps. He advanced and swept close; brushed him with an arm and shoulder, punctured him with a quick, smart jab of the pen to the back of the thigh, and pushed out through the steel door.
One three-quarters hour in the maculated uterine dark of the locker room had made the gym and its hem of day white and biting. Hussar forged out into the lot and spotted Foster’s Suburban by the key fob’s call, and he took it. He climbed up and situated his shoulder bag and cautiously wadded the towel over the pen and peeled the one glove from his pen-hand, and put these in a trash liner and hove them into the back. He fit a fresh pair of gloves and passed briefly through Foster’s wallet and scrolled through his phone, and stoked the truck by its wheezy furnace, into life.
The phone was a rectangle fresh with petroleum esters and the aroma of new electronics—of solders and silicone microchips and lithium ions taking current and passing charge for the first time: a BlackBerry with shiny un-oiled keys and the protective display decal intact and straight from packaging. It shown a call, yesterday, and thirty minutes later a text; a message sent in psychological superscript; a conformational Tourette’s—as though the earlier call had been entirely free of detail, or they’d all come last minute in revelation. Hussar did not know, nor did he particularly care, but had practical interest to understand where Foster had thought to be in the hours after he’d wrung off the last of his swim. And that answer, or so it seemed, was in the company of a young Chinese at a restaurant, the corner of South Grand and Hartford. Kim Soong occupied no place in his awareness, but there she was, put down in Foster’s contacts—recipient of the call and text—and after some time in the tight queue of parking down the curb of Hartford, he recognized a black Mercedes, an S-class that let out a little black-haired waif; and this, he thought, offered suggestions. She’d been set down at the half-block and traipsed back to the restaurant on foot, and the Mercedes doubled back toward Grand for parking with better view. Whatever his interest in the girl, however, it was the prospective heavy in the Mercedes that most occupied his attention. And for that attention there was a further hour without amendment.
This was the figure, Hussar presumed, who’d rolled past the Dutchtown apartment moments before call time—which meant he’d been onto the wheres and whos of Howard Charles Foster, or of August Reams and Co. Despite precautions, this was the figure who’d tailed him to t
he rental return, and not unimpressively, clung on for dear life through the doings on the Parkway—the so far insistent, but not infallible figure who’d shacked up at the Ritz. And about an hour and a minute after he’d arrived, it was the figure—the meaty, sparse-blond, figure—who’d leapt from the Mercedes and stormed across the street into the restaurant and drug out the girl a moment later as though she was his own wayward child. And he toss her in the car and pulled off, and Hussar, far down the block, hurried out after them.
Traffic on Grand palpitated unmuffled and with frenetic working-class urgency, like bees before the fall of dusk. Hussar made the next light out and followed, back into University City, where, he thought—rather unexpectedly—they’d gone to pay visit to Foster. They’d parked up in front—and Hussar very much behind, sat beneath the brow of a hill, where, just under his visor he could see the girl camped and smoking on Foster’s front step, and the bare roofline of the sedan. Hussar was interested and amused that they’d come, to stake out the house in its living presence. It spoke to what was known, whom they followed and how closely, and onto which beat in measure they fell. But, for what it told, it cast light also on what was not known: whose players were these and what outcome were they advancing?
They’d been there some time before the call, her in a pout on the step and the man in the car and out of view. There was some exchange: she listened, didn’t hear or didn’t believe, looked in confirmation; dug a phone from her bag, and then the phone rattled in the cup holder—Foster’s phone. Hussar picked it up. He didn’t answer, but observed its screen glowing through the protective decal, and he caressed it with a gentle touch of his hand. He pet the phone with a sort of tickled delight—suppressed but genuine—an appreciation for the charm of a gemstone in irony, polished and perfectly cut. And he smiled, a big warm intoxicated belly laugh of a smile. It was a small, hot pleasure, and life he thought, offers so few. He imagined what she’d planned to say, what message she’d intended to craft: ‘Oh, where are you, Foster? Weren’t we supposed to meet, Foster? Oh, it’s all fine, Charles, but couldn’t I just see you now?’
Why call now, Hussar wondered, why not before—an hour ago? They thought they’d had it in hand, was why. They’d thought they were playing the down-stroke, right in front of the beat, on the very toes of the measure. And, just now, it was crossing someone’s mind they weren’t—they’d lost the pocket and the bar too, and thought they’d catch-up at the refrain. But they were adrift, and Hussar thought, could no longer tell by how much. This call was pulling threads.
The phone ceased its mortal hum. The girl shook her head and got up for the car. And then they sat, Hussar figured, with no square move left to play. Whatever else it might be, it would be an entertainment. Something like watching a blind man stumble in unfamiliar daylight, or a dissectologist earnestly chasing down puzzles for which all the pieces are not disposed. And then they pulled off, with that rudder-slip of urgency and frustration and wheel-spin, and Hussar followed.
2.
The Mercedes turned off Big Bend at Zephyr and stopped a door down from Edmund LeFrance—August Reams’ man with the great white truck and card habit—and when they did, Marek Hussar felt that lustrous apprehension of good fortune, that cheerful pique of something gifted, unsought and handy. He cut down the next left and eased four blocks down to Bellevue before doubling back the return distance along Zephyr. He collected Foster’s things, took deep relaxing breaths and drove slowly balancing the wheel against his knee while situating his bag and fitting the suppressor to the USP Tactical. And when eventually he edged up quietly opposite the Mercedes, the girl was looking the other way. Hussar rolled down the window and waved, and the girl noticed the wave and then noticed the Suburban, and with a hasty and eager familiarity stooped from the passenger seat to see the driver under the roofline and brought a smile with her to show, and Hussar put two rounds through the side glass and then a thermite grenade as well. After a few seconds the grenade spit and hissed and filled the car with sparks and smoke, and Hussar leaned back behind the B-pillar of the truck and watched.
In a moment a figure rustled in the curtain at LeFrance’s house—peaked at first and then pulled a few inch gap to see in disbelief. It was but an instant, but in it Hussar could see that it was the sparse blond—the driver, the heavy—and he could see his eyes go wide to see the car, and he could see them sweep through the smoke, lift across the street to the truck, and Hussar could not tell what they saw when they reached him—if they had understood what they saw—because he sent two rounds through the window where he stood, and he had fallen away.
Hussar swapped the clip for a fresh magazine, pinned another thermite grenade and toss it in the back of the truck near the tank, and rushed the door of the house. He took the stairs by twos and swung through the door and to the side, toward the window. There, the blond lay on his back in a litter of glass crumbs, with taps astride the sternum and the Browning on the floor, and fingers probing to dislodge the suffocating mass, and issuing faintly of pneumatic purge, like a stabbed inner tube’s resolving breath. Hussar put a round in his head the look of a carnal bindi, and checked pulse on LeFrance tipped back in a chair. “I see you two’ve been introduced,” he said, when he’d dropped the wrist. He returned to the blond and went through his pockets. He found his identification and spare magazine, and the padded envelope and the small thumb drive, which he kept. Hussar drug the blond by the hands, along the floor into the kitchen and rest him near the stove. When he returned for LeFrance there were sirens which arose and drown the hollow knock of ball and mellifluous prattle of the tennis broadcast; a drone of coarse tires and the organ-grinding diesel notes of heavy machinery, and Hussar glanced from the window to see a fire engine rounding the corner, and drawing to rest in the small fraction of the block unobstructed by the two burning cars.
“That’s uncanny,” said Hussar, and shared a look with LeFrance. “Do they live next door?” He watched briefly as the fire crew dismounted and deployed hoses and protective gear from locker boxes and compartments and Hussar shook his head and looked again to LeFrance. He looked at the Redhawk and moved to borrow it from LeFrance’s grasp and returned to the window where he squeezed off the five remaining rounds into the fire truck where they lighted upon mirror chrome and aluminum panels and heavy windshield glass. As they rang out, the concussion of the first had not dissolved before the last had played, and when the entire crew leaped to ground, Hussar felt satisfied he’d purchased a better disposal—it would be two to three minutes for the police to arrive in numbers, a further ten before they’d have the building fully cordoned, and longer still before they’d let the department break cover to lay hose on the first thing.
Hussar drug LeFrance into the kitchen and put him on the floor beside the blond. He went through LeFrance’s coat and withdrew the small worn chapbook and held it between them in appreciation: “The Rilke…says otherwise,” he said, slipped the book into his coat and put their armaments and identification in the oven. He put Foster’s effects there as well and checked for the standpipe behind the stove; lit the burners and broiler, inventoried his things, released the handle on the last thermite grenade, dropped it down the gap beside the gas line, and he left by the rear entrance.
XV.
Charles Foster watched from the hall as the door closed over the silhouette of the man as he left. The door swung out and paddled back and forth to rest and threw short beats of light into the dim cavity of the hall—pulses of something which kicked back the smoky membrane until the passage was engorged once more in full shade. A can-light overhead that spoke occasionally in white-glinted ticks said nothing today, and sensing it, Foster wondered formlessly, whether the passage in its natural, intended state was illuminated by a working fixture casting shadow, or darkened by a broken fixture casting light. He reached down and touched the back of his thigh and looked at the spot of blood on his fingers and wiped it against his shorts—“For
Christ’ sake.” At first he took a step back toward the door, as though he might follow the man out and have words about carelessness—might share indignant protest into shrugging rebuttal; and then waved off the idea with his hand and turned back down the hall toward the lockers.
His mind shone again on the man—the multi-colored bruise on his shoulder; the shooting bruise; the unaccountable emergence from the pool, like some punched-up water spirit; the stupid collision in the hall—there was some burgeoning association inflating his imagination that had been aborted with a prick—dislodged with a hip-check. He could no longer envision its point of contact, nor even the leads to reach it. It receded before him: the spark, the arc it traveled, the points of termination, the approaching armature, even the electrifying impulse was spending its tungsten-glow. He’d lost the kinetic euphoria of the morning, the level calm of the pool, the bite-force of his presence of mind, and now, he didn’t feel well either.
He shuffled past the kink in the hall, round the blind corner of its end, and into the jaundiced splendor of the locker. A man, round and tan as a barrel, changed shorts where he washed hands at the sinks. A pensioner from distant antiquity loitered in tube socks and translucent drapery of hide on a bench beside his things. Down the causeway of lockers, someone crossed to enter the showers with carriage as though eagerly receiving guests. To his side, a man stood in the bank of urinals and looked upon his work in long, confounded fixity; and Foster moved toward the back and toward his locker and toward the bench before it, where he now had a vision to sit. But Foster felt a blanching nausea, and made for the toilets instead.
The first he tried was dappled in bright high-vitamin yellow—so thoroughly marked it seemed a work in contest. The next was fetid with lurid residuals. And the next, he took, because he feared he wouldn’t make another. He fiddled with the lock, but it would not latch, and he fell to rest upon the bow of seat. He was clammy and depleted, and sat on the toilet for an age of minutes—one minute; five?—a determination of time which seemed further and further distended with each interceding breath; each pass at calculation. He stare at the glyphs and etchings of the stall, the countless individuated cuneiform ciphers, ad-hoc to a man—to his predecessors—and to their moment in restless and disparaging turn. Cave painting, he thought with a cough that had begun as the impulse to smile—a grim, blinking, curdle of smile—but threatened now to empty him to his toes. Discomfort in his thigh swelled from throbbing knocks to a perfect and singular coal whose heat and dimension accumulated like surf, one lick upon the next. It was his leg—this was a thought. It was the puncture—this was a thought. The man delivered the puncture—this was a thought. But they were, each of them vacant, voiceless thoughts. The thinker did not hold them, did not direct them, lay no claim to possessing them—but rather, saw them: they were pictograms, illustrated panels, ink blots held out before him on flash cards. Foster watched these thoughts, watched the panels swap, watched them strobe and flutter with projected backlight. His thigh twitched and clenched. His leg trembled. He was chill and nauseous and faint, and now the perch on the toilet seat towered above the floor, was high and unsteady and sway with the motion of his shuddering leg. He had a sharp instinct to get down, to retreat toward his faltering pulse and assume the position—to be on his knees and to hang his arms from the toilet and lay his cheek on the cool seat whose first cleansing touch had come in the pool-water damp of his trunks.
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