All Cry Chaos

by Leonard Rosen

  "It could hardly matter."

  Sometimes, Poincaré felt like a butcher surgeon paid to remove shrapnel without anesthesia. "In fact, it matters," he said. "If you want to remove your husband from a working list of suspects, you'll tell me where you stayed. If you don't, I'll call the clinic and discover that for myself—and assume you have something to hide. If you do, I'll call the clinic and also the inn and speak with everyone he spoke with—to the extent possible. If he was as weak as you say, and there's no reason to doubt that, we'll be able to settle this and I'll leave you alone. I'll extend my apologies and cross him off my list. So, please: where did you stay between his release from the clinic and the final blood tests?"

  She was shaking.

  Poincaré waited; he needed answers.

  "Scharnitz," she said.

  "Just over the border in Austria? I know it—on the rail line between Munich and Innsbruck. You stayed at an inn?"

  "Yes."

  "What's the name of the inn?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Please," said Poincaré. "It's a small village, and there can't be many inns. I'll call them all, if need be. I could also e-mail your photo and Randal's."

  She looked at him, disbelieving. "You would do that?"

  "What was the name of the inn, Mrs. Young?"

  "We didn't stay at an inn."

  "Where, then?"

  "With Randal's parents. I took him to say goodbye."

  Reasonable, he thought, but odd. "Your husband was an American citizen. His parents lived in Austria?"

  "His father was a career diplomat for the State Department. He was stationed in Munich for about eight years from the time Randal was nine or so. The parts of his childhood he remembered most fondly were there. He skied, climbed, hiked—they loved the mountains enough to buy a cottage, which was a kind of base camp to get to the Alps. Lewis and Francine retired in Scharnitz, and Randy visited when he could. It was more his home than Pasadena. If you move six times in your first eighteen years, you can't really point to a place on the map and say, This is where I belong. Randy came out here for school—he wanted to work in mining, anything to be around the mountains. We met at Cal Tech, when he was finishing a Masters degree."

  "And you were doing what at the time?"

  "Also studying chemistry. We met as teaching assistants in an Organics lab."

  "I see. And is there much work for chemists in Colorado?"

  "No, not where I'm moving."

  "And you're going there to—"

  "To concentrate on my boys for a few years. My family has a ranch, and I thought it might be good for the children to have cousins and uncles around—if that's alright with you."

  "Why didn't you say so at first—about his parents?"

  "Because I respect my husband's privacy—and his parents' grief. And now you'll be calling them." Her eyes watered.

  "I will call them," he said. "There's a chemical mix in circulation that could do a great deal of harm in the wrong hands—that's already done harm. A man died."

  "My man died!"

  "I know that, and I'm very—"

  "Don't you dare."

  She was folding in on herself, but he pushed harder: "One more thing." He reached into a pocket and produced James Fenster's passport photo. "Have you seen this man?"

  "Go away."

  "Or these women?" He placed the photographs of Dana Chambi and Madeleine Rainier before her and watched closely. Her eyes were already red, her chest heaving. It would be difficult to catch a change in expression. She stared in the direction of the photos but did not appear to focus.

  "Forgive my intrusion," he said, collecting his things. "I know your husband had no criminal record. He didn't even have parking tickets. I'm sure he was the man you and others say he was. But I've brought a potential bomber and a bombing this close." He showed a thin space between his thumb and forefinger. "There's something I'm not understanding, Mrs. Young. Was your husband a religious man—a devout Christian by any chance?"

  "What?"

  "The End Times—did he believe the world was about to end?"

  "Are you mad ?"

  Poincaré took a half-step toward the door. "Last night," he said, "I ran a credit report on your husband and you. This is a fine home, with a grand view. In any event, I saw that the mortgage on the house—some $1,250,000—was paid off on the 24 of March. Life insurance, I thought. But Mrs. Young, you didn't return to the United States and your husband didn't die until March 20th. You couldn't have gotten a certificate of death to the insurance company that quickly, and in any event these companies don't pay claims of this size in three or four days. On large payouts, they routinely check for fraud. These things usually take—"

  "Get out!" she screamed. She grabbed a dinner plate, and Poincaré prepared to duck. But instead of throwing the plate, Julie Young set it on a square of newspaper. Eyes glazed, she wrapped it and began humming a tune.

  CHAPTER 33

  Suitcase in hand, standing before the Paris Hotel and Casino, Poincaré heard a familiar baritone and felt the clap of Serge Laurent's bear paw on his shoulder. "And you thought nothing could beat the Old World for charm. Viva Las Vegas, Henri!" Poincaré turned to embrace a friend but instead found a ghost. Laurent sipped from a cup of green liquid that smelled of rubbing alcohol and raised a finger. "Shh," he said. "If we don't talk about it, it goes away."

  Poincaré dropped his bag. "Have you seen a doctor?" Laurent coughed, and Poincaré realized that no further medical opinions would be needed. "I'm leaving for France tomorrow," he said. "Come home with me."

  "Sorry," said Laurent. "I'm submitting my reports on schedule, and the stuffed shirts think I'm functioning at an acceptable level. What they don't know isn't hurting them."

  "But it's killing you. How much weight have you lost?"

  "Enough. And the work's keeping me alive, if anything. Relax."

  Poincaré handed his bag to an attendant. "Find us a bar, for pity's sake."

  He followed Laurent through the casino—a windowless, Parisianthemed playground designed, Poincaré supposed, to evoke memories of a stroll along the Seine for those who had never visited. Gaming tables sat beneath verdigris grillwork reminiscent of Paris métro stations. On the ceiling stretched a painted summer sky. And poking through the room like some robotic Godzilla were two massive, girdered legs of a half-scale Eiffel Tower—the casino's signature landmark. The total effect was in turns preposterous and mesmerizing. It was a movie set with actual people spending actual money, laughing and drinking, enjoying themselves thoroughly. Management had to be pleased if what Poincaré saw at a blackjack table was any indication. A bored-looking woman in a midnight blue dress and diamonds lost thousands when the dealer flipped a jack instead of a long-shot deuce. Gone in an instant, the equivalent of four overdue mortgage payments on his vineyard. Was it possible? She casually slipped another tall stack of chips into three betting lanes. The dealer scooped spent cards and chips in one practiced motion and dealt again. Above the din of slot machines and craps players hollering for sevens floated the music of Édith Piaf.

  Laurent found an elevator. When the doors opened into a second floor lounge, Poincaré read the marquis and said: "You're joking."

  "Risqué," said Laurent. It's a perfectly good name for a bar. Just shut up long enough for me to buy us a beverage. They have a surprisingly good wine list." They spoke in French, and a young woman showing a good deal of cleavage approached with a hearty "Bonjour!"

  Poincaré checked his watch. "Bon soir," he said. "Est-ce qu'on peut s'asseoir sur le divan près de la fenêtre?"

  The woman stared, helpless.

  "The windows," said Laurent, grinning. "May we sit there?"

  They crossed the lounge to a panoramic view of the Las Vegas Strip as salsa music pulsed at a volume that was nearly visible. Poincaré reached for a laminated card that promised patrons a convergence of elegance and energy . . . for a myriad of appetites. "What does this even mean?" he
yelled over the music. Laurent—winded, his eyes closed—hadn't heard a word. Poincaré shook his arm. "Why are you still here?"

  "Two guesses."

  "Serge, I'm not playing."

  "Neither am I. My assignment was to report on the Soldiers of Rapture. In case you hadn't noticed, there are more souls in need of saving in Las Vegas than anywhere in the world—except, possibly, Los Angeles. Las Vegas is Rapturian central, Henri." He began to cough. "Wait until you see the rest of this place. They've got La Boutique for your shopping pleasure, La Cave for overpriced wines, La Vogue to accessorize the ladies. Only in America—it's a highlights reel, Henri, a comic book. But I'll tell you this, you won't get your pocket picked on Le Boulevard. The security in this casino is unbelievable." He perused the wine list. "You should sell them a few dozen cases. They'll go for anything French, no matter how awful."

  All the joy was gone from the insult. Poincaré stared across the boulevard to the Bellagio, where the fountain display had just come on. Addressing the colored jets of water, he recounted for Laurent the present state of chaos in his life: Claire was lost, with one foot in this world and the other in a place he could not enter; Etienne had recently walked a whole thirty paces before collapsing in pain; Lucille's latest skin graft had left her with an infection; Georges, making progress with his new leg, continued to cry for his brother; and Émile, in and out of a now lighter coma, had squeezed his mother's hand before drifting away once more. "And the doctors are calling this progress," said Poincaré. "Etienne won't speak to me or let me near the children." He put a hand to his forehead, checking for a fever.

  "You did your job," said Laurent. "It's not reasonable to expect a demented fuck like Banović to sic his dogs on you. . . . Henri, you'd already left for the States when I heard about Chloe. I'm so—"

  Poincaré stopped him. "We're not discussing your cancer, and we're not discussing my granddaughter."

  Laurent nodded. "Waitress! A bottle of Lynch Bages, 1982."

  "What the hell, Serge! That's six hundred U.S."

  Laurent smiled as the woman retreated.

  "What's so funny?"

  "What's so funny is that after thirty years you still can't stand to lose yourself in a bottle of good wine. Really, in the last quarter-century how many times have I seen you just sit back and stop for one goddamned minute?" Laurent stretched and leaned into the couch. "I remember your father predicting you wouldn't last in this job. Or that if you did, the work wouldn't put your God-given talents to use. He was a tough nut, I'll grant you. What was the man thinking, naming you Henri?"

  "He wanted a mathematician," said Poincaré. "Someone to keep the family business alive since he didn't get the gene. But I was no Jules Henri either. I'm sure I disappointed him."

  "Like hell! I may be the one living person who paid attention to the 'Heroes of France' lesson when we were kids. Tell me when I misremember: your great-grandfather began as a mining engineer who investigated an accident that baffled everyone else. He walked straight into a collapsed mine, deduced causes, wrote a report—and later became the Inspector General of the Corps de Mines while he was the world's mathematical darling. Chaos theory. Relativity. Topology. Henri: the man dug for a living. You dig. Different mines is all. You are in the family business. Your father didn't see it—but Jules Henri would have been proud."

  Serge was vanishing. How thin life would be without him.

  They listened to music until the wine arrived. After a second glass, Poincaré imagined sitting beside his old friend at the stern rail of a ship, watching the wake churn in the moonlight.

  "Lyon wants me out," he said.

  "You got that memo, too? I suppose we're now men of a certain age. . . . You know," said Laurent, staring out the window, "not one of my wives could compete with the adrenaline rush I got from being out in the field. All four of them needed me to come home. I needed to be out here, and I got exactly what I asked for. Now I'll be cared for by strangers in the end. To hell with that. I'm going to die on top of a woman, not in a hospital."

  The DJ switched from salsa to merengue, and Serge began tapping out the rhythm with the silver nugget on his finger. "I don't care if Las Vegas is a fantasy. I love the place!" A fresh fit of coughing bent him over, and this time Poincaré saw a red stain on his handkerchief. Laurent noted the change in Poincaré's face and said: "Do not fuck me up by getting sentimental. This is hard enough."

  Poincaré closed his eyes.

  "I'll tell you about my work—it will be a diversion."

  "Go ahead. But we'll need another bottle, which I can't afford."

  Laurent held up the empty and motioned to a waitress. "You already know how much I detest the Soldiers of Rapture. But give credit where it's due: their marketing, if you can call it that, has been nothing short of brilliant. How many people could you find who won't be looking to the sky on August 15th?"

  Poincaré was staring through the arch of his steepled fingers, watching the fountains. "The countdown calendar I saw at the airport this evening read twenty-five. I've been in five cities in as many days. The calendars are everywhere."

  "Exactly my point," said Laurent. "There are three strains of Rapturians, best I can tell. The harmless ones you see preaching on street corners in robes wouldn't understand Christian theology if they stubbed their toes on Saint Augustine's grave. The earnest ones, also on street corners, actually know their gospels and are spreading the Good News best they can. These are the original Soldiers. I think of them as Jehovah's Witnesses in robes. Finally we have the schismatics, in two delicious flavors: the ones killing doers of good works to hasten the Second Coming. They scare the shit out of me."

  "But not as much as the suicide bombers for Christ?"

  "They're total lone wolves, Henri. The schismatics meet in groups to work up their hit lists. The bombers have absolutely no connection to the Rapturians. They've got no religious or political agenda, and at the moment they're putting on robes and shouting Jesus because it gives their pathology a higher calling. What amazes me is the countdown to August 15th. Everyone knows the date—it's spread like a flu pandemic. Same model."

  Poincaré sat up.

  "Don't look so surprised. Mathematicians study rumor the way epidemiologists study disease. They use computer models to simulate spread and discover ways to block it. In one case you've got a virus and in the other, a rumor of the Second Coming. Both leave markers: people with a fever or the appearance of countdown calendars. The dynamics are remarkably similar. When you map these data points, something interesting emerges. You could be looking at the plot of a rumor infiltrating a workplace, a city, a county, a region—and even a nation or continent. Set the graphs side by side, and you can't distinguish the spread at one level from the spread at others. Ditto for flu. Do you remember, in Amsterdam, how Quito told us about the coastline of Christchurch, New Zealand? How—if he enlarged one section of the coast—we couldn't tell which was the one-kilometer slice and which, the forty kilometer? Same thing with influenza and rumors. When you look at a part—"

  Poincaré knew the rest.

  Deep in his pocket, he found himself working the contours of the buffalo nickel as he might a polished stone. He rubbed the coin thinking a genie might appear, rubbed it for all the luck that had turned bad and—in this casino, why not—rubbed it for new luck, better luck. For that's what the world turned on, he decided. He had tried goodness and right behavior, and where had that gotten him or the ones he loved? He released the coin and allowed that something he had resisted for a long time was demanding a name.

  Across the boulevard, reflected in the waters, Poincaré saw gold atoms measured in microns and galaxies measured in light years. He saw rivers in mountains and mountains in trees and lightning strikes in the lungs of a friend who would never again draw a full breath. For weeks, the deepest of deep structures had sung to Poincaré like an angelic host, and he could resist no more. Had this casino been a church, he would have uttered a Name. But Poincaré could n
ot—not yet—because across the ocean his family was broken and in the seat beside him his friend was dying. Would that Name have permitted the murder of a child? The suffering of innocents? For thirty years he had watched good men and women stricken, raising their hands to Heaven. He uttered a cry that Laurent mistook for a question.

  "I'll tell you why a rumor spreads, Henri: because we demand a path through chaos. I'm dying. Don't you think it would be pleasant for me to accept the Rapture and the prospect of sitting at our Lord's right hand?"

  "You don't believe?" said Poincaré.

  "I don't believe."

  "You think there's nothing after this?"

  "Nothing at all," said Laurent. "And along come the Rapturians who offer eternal peace. You grab hold and you're happy. I could but I won't. Was it ever different?"

  "I don't know," said Poincaré.