Haden shook his head. “Like executions. Like he’s getting impatient.”
“Have released hostages been reporting this?”
“Nobody has been released in four hours and the idea is that this might have started within the past hour.”
“An idea based on what evidence?” Pegg said.
“Well, not much really. I never said I believed the story.”
“Fucking hell,” Pegg said, staring at Haden. “What’re you telling me for?”
“Just giving you the picture, Thom. It’s what people are saying. Best guess at numbers is under a dozen remaining now. And the thinking is that these situations work down to some significant configuration. Then they resolve for lack of material.”
Pegg breathed deeply, several times. “You are fucking with me.”
“I’m not. You’re here because the man asked for you,” Haden said.
“You know what I think?” Pegg said. “I think I was your bright idea.”
Haden nodded like he’d expected Pegg to say this eventually. “I’d like to say yes. I really would. As an idea, you would have been a good one.”
“He asked for the New York Times, didn’t he? He asked for the Washington Post. For the BBC World Service. And they all said no.”
Haden found a vial in a hip pocket and unscrewed the lid, extracted a tightly hand-rolled cigarette. Darkish paper. He lit up and offered it to Pegg, who shook his head but knew the sweet scent. Beedis. Pegg thought: Please may I one day know what kind of federal operative, what the fuck kind of gray-zone emissary smokes beedis on the job.
Pegg said: “I’m having a hard time placing you, to be frank. In the scheme of things.”
Haden inhaled the clovey smoke and held it, nodding. He released the lung-load while talking, his words sculpted in gray eddies and whorls. “My line is more creative than it used to be.”
“And what line is that?”
“Think like human resources.”
“You mean I could hand in my letter of resignation?”
“You could but you won’t,” Haden said. “You’ve been in that pressroom. You’ve seen the envious looks. The Washington Post said no? What are you, out of your mind? There isn’t a paper on the planet that wouldn’t kill for what you have right now. Right in front of you.”
Pegg glanced away again. The soldier near the entrance to the parking garage was gone.
“You’ve got the whole thing read,” Pegg said. “Simple, simple.”
“I didn’t say simple. I see a situation here that is many sided.”
“Do you really? I sort of see it having only two sides myself. Some lunatic threatening some other people who are probably not lunatics even if they are KiddieFame contestants.”
Haden pressed out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe. “I’d be the last person to try and dissuade you in a moment of moral clarity. But you’re really a spectacularly arrogant prick, aren’t you?”
Morality between the garbage bins. Talking to a guy who got trained up at some private farm in rural Virginia or in the lake country outside of Regina. Knows fifteen ways to kill a man with a safety pin or a gelato spoon. Running down this line of reasoning, Pegg had a thought. The guys in the pressroom, the ripple of awareness when he’d entered. The galvanizing flash of his own resolve on sensing that he was the center of an envy field, his situation profoundly desired by all those arrayed around, arms hung over the backs of chairs, phones flipped open, screens flickering a thousand news feeds from other parts of the world, an endless loop on Meme Media. Whose eyes in that moment had just swiveled onto him, onto Pegg. Who never questioned why they all wanted it so much, the rare chance to go verbal with the real thing, the man with death on his mind, yours and his. They all wanted that. It was the thing coveted above all.
He asked: “Why tell anyone that I’d been given access?”
Haden looked at his watch and then the lowered sky. He said: “We set the information free. I mean, either that’s the answer or: does it matter anyway?”
The drops of rain began to strike the alley garbage and the sheet lids of the dumpsters and Pegg himself. He does his job well indeed, Pegg thought. Haden calls the rain down. Haden darkens the mood. Haden pulls something small from his inside pocket that he wants carried inside.
“You must be joking,” Pegg said.
“It’s not a weapon,” Haden said. “It’s a voice recorder.”
“I know what it is. I have my own, thanks.”
“Of course you do. This is your own.”
Pegg took the tape recorder and rolled it in his hands. Japanese minidisc, ten years dated although it still worked well. Omnidirectional mike and a dozen hours’ recording time on long play. Pointless to ask how Haden had gotten it. The fact was he had gotten it. Although nothing looked jigged or souped or tricked-up about it. Pegg paged through the storage folders, all empty as he had left them, except for Folder D. And there it was. The single recording that had survived all purging. A snip of audio that had traveled with him and lived on this machine while it recorded other voices in Bel Air haciendas and Park Avenue triplex palaces, in warehouse lofts on Queen West. And before that, in places where the real victims had been. In poisoned lives and toxic landscapes. This thirty-second clip had comforted him before sleep in an uncountable number of hotel rooms before his fall and since.
“Record your conversation with the man,” Haden was saying. “He’ll expect that.”
Pegg’s thumb brushed the buttons.
“Then at some point, when the moment seems right,” Haden said, “play your little clip there.”
Pegg looked up at him. “Like a signal.”
“The man is wearing night-vision, we believe,” Haden said. “We’d like you to confirm that, perhaps at a moment when you and the man are separated from the others by some distance. Night-vision, Pegg. If yes, hit Play.”
“And you’ll hear me.”
“As long as you’re carrying that device, we’ll hear you loud and clear.”
“And what will happen?”
“Something sudden, Thom. But you mustn’t be frightened. Wait for that critical moment. Then hit Play.”
Pegg’s eyes returned to the silver surface of the voice recorder, the places worn gray where his thumb had so many times carried out its fractional movement. He pressed Play, right there, like a practice run, releasing the warbled voice into wet air. Three years old when the recording was made and an impressive grasp of fundamental things for a kid that age. He knew how to sell a punch line, that kid.
“What did the skeleton say when he walked into a bar?” asked the boy. One beat. “Give me a beer. And a mop.”
And there it was. The sound of his boy laughing. Micah Swenson Pegg. A delight, a joy. There was nothing else. And you could hear it in Pegg’s laughter too. Booming in the background. Pegg a hundred years younger than he was now. A hundred shades lighter. Pegg laughing with his boy. Jennifer looking in through the door from her office, a half smile on her face.
Had they been happy? They had been ecstatic.
PEGG HAD AN ERRAND. Twenty minutes, Haden told him. No longer.
The Pig and Python. Typical turnkey bar that belonged to the international Celtosphere. Pegg knew it was there. He had no idea how he knew. He was sure he’d never been there before. But as he forded the rivers of rainwater and floating garbage, found the alley mouth and surveyed the street, he sensed it just to the corner and left. Fake gold leaf. Fake red velvet booths. Fake fiddle music. Fake cheer. The place was perfect. They outdid the Irish in every respect and that’s what the Celtosphere demanded.
Irish whiskey, he thought, as a matter of gratitude and respect. One slender half-pint pocket bottle for each side of his long overcoat, which was too hot for his situation but which he found himself unwilling to remove. Sweating in place at the bar, leaned in over a triple for the road. Neat. No ice. He was perspiring and palpitating, struggling to keep his breathing non-critical. He was gulping at the whiskey, wa
iting for its cauterizing magic in his middle regions, a certain slow calming of the troubles there, the shifting allegiances and betrayals of his inner works and yards. All the while his eyes were locked on the three white swallows that adorned the label of the bottle that had been poured. Their shapes lithe and perfect, flitting around one another in a rosette of purity, making sense of the universe with play, with a circular arrangement of their spotlessly iconic selves.
Pegg struggled with emotion, sipping. Then sipping again. Unfamiliar feelings and his movements to deal with them were not grooved by practice either. Swarmed by . . . what was this? Some kind of sorrow or grief, as if he had already done something for which an avalanche of guilt had been released. He swallowed and coughed, choked, then fumbled out a handkerchief to cover his face. After a few seconds, face buried in this scrap of once-white cotton that hadn’t seen the laundry in many months, he made to blow, but had an epiglottal misfiring doing so, a loud and messy effect. He produced a throaty blatt and left a rivulet of snot across his lip and chin. Agh. Damn. Wiped away. Glances now from the college-aged bartender, who had questioned the triple with an eyebrow spasm and an involuntary look at the clock over Pegg’s head. Whose glance now had no resting place, bouncing around the room and checking his brunch crowd for reaction. English tourists. Little jars of jam with toast and porcelain pots of tea.
Pegg gulped down the last of his drink, then exited to the street and found his corner, his fetid alley mouth. He entered and passed a dumpster he had somehow not noticed when heading out. A typical metal bin, reeking and sordid, but which someone had artfully postered over to make it look like a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage. Must have taken hours getting all those sheets of paper lined up, getting the seams just right. Hours certainly to get that perfect-hued effect. Magnificently in place while being out of place, luxurious pebblegrained leather against the muck.
Onward. No time to linger on the seething streets in this most seething town. He was past and moving on towards the back door of the hotel. Steeling himself, by the step. Unused to the procedure, but wondering if his display of emotion back at the bar might have been useful, in its way. He was done with the self-pity now, Pegg thought, his mind flickering forward to what nobler spirit must now be stockpiled in preparation for the events ahead. Which was a line of self-talk that might well have continued—Pegg was nothing if not susceptible to his own reasoning—if half a dozen steps farther down he hadn’t been stopped by what the alley wall next threw up for his consideration. A large poster had been mounted on the brick. Eight feet high by five feet wide. Styled as if after a thirties-era election poster, all face and slogan, black and white. The double jab of a political rhetoric aimed at those with guards held low.
Under a picture of what looked like two small figurines of circus strongmen, barbells aloft, the slogan: Ignorance Is Strength. And plastered across the center, a new picture, recently appended to the whole: a not particularly flattering photo of Thom Pegg.
He was now awake in a different way than he could remember being for a long time. Ripped off a website, scanned out of an issue of the magazine, candid maybe, although it had to be said, however the photo had been obtained, Pegg himself was looking just a shade less well than he would have hoped to appear in print. A bit bruised under the eyes. A bit florid and blossomy across the cheekbones.
Pegg was trying to deal now with new currents and fluxes within, adrenaline, random synaptic firings. Someone in the press pool, the jealous bastards. But an old dread was coming again to life. Pegg knew exactly what the feeling was: the dread sense of being watched, followed. Pegg felt targeted. And he longed for home just then, staring at this thing. This gag. This taunt. He ached not just for the city where he lived, with its hot breezes, palm trees, tanning lotion, exhaust, Mexican food, reefer, public-beach porn. He was longing even for his own cramped apartment with the crushed furniture and the empty refrigerator. Three hundred and fifty square feet of gobbed Kleenexes and spent pizza boxes. Kitty litter. Empties. A ceramic model of a Chinese lady holding a lantern. She had a cork in her head, had once held liqueur. And thinking all this, Chastity came back to him, but only for the briefest moment before Pegg chased her from the room of his recollection. Not now. Not even that.
No time to linger. Pegg was now being spoken to from close, with urgency. Haden was there. Two other men. Then a fourth man in uniform, who would take Pegg the final distance. Helmet, face gear, black fatigues. He had a weapon that suggested a great deal by its completely unfamiliar shape. What trickery was there in this tiny rifle that seemed to mount itself to the man’s arm, a slender, serpentine thing that glinted blue in the failing light? What evil had we here, Pegg wondered, what elegant and hidden industry of malfeasance in that smooth shape?
“Ready,” someone said. Not a question. A radio squelching quietly in behind the sound of water trickling in the sewers. They crossed the street and into another alley running parallel to the plaza. Around a corner to a dead end. There were loading bays and various men in blue arrayed about. They didn’t take their eyes off the rear door of the theater as Pegg approached. None of them but one man standing facing the other way, circling and scanning the rooflines, rifle raised.
The soldier guiding Pegg had his hand on Pegg’s arm, holding him back. He motioned and Pegg leaned close to listen. Through these doors he would find a warehouse with another single door at the far end. Through that second door was a hallway. Through that hallway was the foyer of the studio theater. The only door into the theater that wasn’t locked would be right there at the top of the foyer. Announce yourself, loud and clear. Then go inside. Pegg would be on his own at that point and in blackness.
Pegg felt the pressure of the soldier’s hand change as this information was transferred. The hand went from holding Pegg in place to pushing him forward, first gently and then with frank authority. Go now. So Pegg was walking. Moving forward. He was entering the shadows of the loading bay. And since nobody said good luck, he said it himself. Good luck. His voice at a trembling whisper. To the door and through it. Down the hallway and into the empty foyer. His blood moving in coarse surges he could feel in his neck and his temples. Good luck, Thom. Through the silent foyer and lobby, past the empty leather benches there. Hand to the surface of the heavy wooden door, fingers shaking violently. Quivering, dancing, shimmying just over the polished surface before they steadied on contact with the wood.
Good luck.
And into the blackness, blind and gagging. Pegg entered the theater and the latrine stench of a closed space rolling towards its second twelve hours. His throat convulsed and he groped to cover his mouth and nose.
“Hello?” he tried, muffled through his fingers. He felt his heart rate spike, his hands shaking again, his whole organism polluted with adrenaline and anxiety. Around him there was no light at all.
“Hello?” he said again. And hearing the sound around him shifting now too. Some snuffled breathing from far away. Then a voice. But close. It might have been inches. It might have been inside his own ear.
“I’m here.”
And a hand on his arm again, but this time closing over his bicep in a firm grip.
Pegg screamed. That’s what his body threw back at the moment. A torque of the shoulders, a strangled call. His belly inflamed and his back in spasm with the sudden touch and sound.
He went to his knees. And from there he fell, toppled sideways and lay. He felt tight carpet grain at his cheek, smelled industrial glues and cleansers and the spreading mystery of building materials. Concrete, rubber.
And it was only there—laid out, blind, exposed—that Pegg heard himself in place, for the first time among them. Through the black space around him, a sprinkling of human sound, scattered scrapes and tiny voices. And the truth of it crushed Pegg flatter still. KiddieFamers, children. In their tiny individual fidgets, a constellation of sound: shoe shuffling, nose blowing, low moans. And crying. All around him, issuing forth from hidden souls, the steady trickle o
f invisible tears.
EVE
EVE TOLD THEM RABBIT WAS HER COUSIN. It seemed like the best story for the moment. They hadn’t cuffed him, but Eve thought that was seconds from happening. The two young cops were tense. They had his pack turned out on the hood of the cruiser. Eve saw tools and wire. These things signaled bad ideas premeditated.
But they hadn’t committed to any action by the moment Eve arrived. And without planning it, without knowing specifically what she hoped to accomplish, Eve interceded on instinct, on impulse.
“Ali,” she said again, which flushed through her an intense variety of excitement. The young man looked like he had some of Ali’s personal material. Declining to look worried, although the situation was obviously serious. Acting as if things were under control, when they clearly weren’t. That attitude was all Ali, all the time. Eve enjoyed seeing it for the way she seemed to immediately tap the energy and feel more certain herself.
So Eve said the name of her brother and made this young man into a cousin. To her own surprise, the whole story was ready to roll there, waiting. Father’s brother’s son. Known for exploring places he wasn’t supposed to explore. Known for not carrying identification. Then, to emphasize, Eve stepped between the two cops and took Rabbit up in a sisterly embrace. She could hear him breathing in her ear. But he held her firmly, this stranger. He played along. And when she let him go to arm’s length and asked about her fictitious uncle, he replied with just the right sheepish tone. Doing fine. Don’t tell him about this, please.
He was much less like the Ali she remembered at this close range, in fact. Same unruly loose black curls, but more relaxed than Ali. Smiling evenly, easy in his stance. Open, tan face, full lips. Gray-green eyes. Bigger than Ali through the upper body. She could feel the cops shifting on their feet behind her, loosening their grip on the situation as Eve promised to return the moment to normal.
“Don’t forget this,” one of them said, handing Rabbit his pack. He thanked them. He apologized. He offered to show up at the station in the morning with identification.
The Blue Light Project Page 18