The Inquisitor

by Mark Allen Smith

  During his years in the Obituaries department at the New York Times, which is where he’d worked before he met Geiger, Harry had developed the conviction that if you lived past forty, sooner or later you’d get cancer. The small percentage who didn’t make it to forty—who died in a head-on or were murdered or stroked out—they would have gotten cancer if they’d lived longer. Now Harry was forty-four, and his body, once a brother-in-arms against the world, could no longer be trusted. He knew from all the lives he’d sifted through that within every man is his own Caesar and Brutus, and from this point on his flesh could betray him at any time. The “Et tu” moment would come, not as a dagger in the back but as a swollen node felt while swallowing, or an enlarged pupil glimpsed in the mirror, or a grape-sized mass found by a fingertip during a shower.

  At times like these Harry envied Geiger. He wouldn’t change places for any price—clearly, the man had more demons than a Hieronymus Bosch painting—but that steel-trap heart and mind had a definite appeal. Nothing ever seemed out of the ordinary to Geiger. He was like some mystical engineer who’d found a way to shut down the highs and lows of happenstance and their impact. Back at the beginning of their partnership, Harry had decided that Geiger was on a mood equalizer, one of those drugs that sandpaper the rough edges off experience. But eventually Harry had changed his mind. If Geiger was on a drug, it was something he produced in his brain, and whatever that chemoneural cocktail was, Harry coveted it.

  They had met eleven years ago in Central Park at three A.M. Harry was drunk, as was his nightly custom then, and he was getting his head kicked in by two skinheads. A few years earlier he had become a dreamless man—not the nocturnal variety, but a man who had let go of any notion of prospects, any promise of the new and different, any hope of something else. The dreams of his youth were as dead as the people he wrote about, ashes and dust, and so the arrhythmic pounding of boot toes on bones and flesh and the breath-sapping pain and the possibility of being ushered out of the world had all felt almost right. Loss had become a sidekick; it was always near, shambling along a few steps behind him. The thought of finally bidding it good-bye was stretching Harry’s battered lips into a smile across broken teeth when Geiger stopped his nighttime run just long enough to lay out the punks in a blur of lethal hands and feet, and then go on his way before Harry could summon breath to speak.

  Two weeks later, with thirty stitches and two new teeth in his head, Harry began a nightly vigil at the site of his humiliation. He didn’t have to wait long: on the second night, in a downpour, Geiger came down the path in T-shirt and sweatpants, and Harry stepped into his route. Geiger stopped, running in place.

  “What do you want?” Geiger asked.

  “I just wanted to say thank you.”

  Geiger’s wet hair shone black as polish. Drops of rain slid down out of his brows and into his eyes, but they didn’t appear to bother him. Harry noticed that he hardly ever blinked.

  “My name’s Harry. Harry Boddicker.”

  He put out his hand, but Geiger didn’t even glance at it.

  “Buy you a drink?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Well, I just thought, seeing as how you saved my life—”

  “It was chance, Harry. It had nothing to do with you. If they’d been kicking a dog I would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Then how about coffee? You drink coffee, don’t you?”

  For a moment, Geiger looked at Harry with his steady, unblinking eyes and said nothing. Harry suddenly felt uneasy; the man seemed to be inspecting him, judging him. Then Geiger nodded and said, “All right, Harry.”

  They went to a bar on Broadway and took a booth in the ammonia-scented shadows. While Geiger nursed a black coffee, Harry had three Wild Turkeys. Over the next three hours, Harry delivered a biographical monologue that was half an eager act of sharing and half an attempt at reaffirmation, as if the tether to his past was dangerously frayed and recounting events would buttress his place in the present.

  The pace of his story picked up when he told Geiger about landing a job at the Times, straight out of City College, as a researcher. “That’s when I discovered I had a talent for digging stuff up. They called me ‘Shovel.’ Funny how sometimes it takes a while before you find out you’re good at something.”

  He told Geiger about nights spent sneaking into computer networks using software of his own design, about deploying those skills to unearth secrets and connect dots, about writing a major piece on racial profiling that made his reputation as a reporter.

  “One morning there it was, second section, page one. ‘By Harry Boddicker.’ It was like, Hey, that’s me.”

  As Harry talked, Geiger said little beyond answering yes or no a few times. He nodded or shook his head to other queries, and although that was the extent of his active participation, he never had the urge to leave. He noticed that Harry tilted precipitously toward the melancholic as the alcohol settled in, and that Harry’s recollections became less detailed and more scattershot as his story went on. Geiger also sensed that Harry was leaving out an important chapter: he talked about his life as if he’d lived in two distinct eras, but he never once mentioned the event that had ended one and brought on the next. At first Harry’s tale was full of excitement and the pride of accomplishment, but then it veered into darker alleyways. His passion for the work waned; the quality of his stories declined precipitously; facts were smudged, deadlines missed. Drinking went from hobby to habit. After months of admonishments, the Times had given him one last chance and a desk in the Obits department.

  “You know that sensation,” Harry said, “when you feel like you’ve hit bottom, and you realize you’re right where you belong?”

  Harry told Geiger that being relegated to Obits had been like a homecoming—he lived with ghosts and their pasts, immersed in their deeds and declines. But it had also spurred him to create ever more sophisticated and cunning search programs. Filling in blanks, giving continuity to chaos—it became an obsession, a strange kind of resurrection.

  Listening to this epic story had been a singular experience for Geiger. In those three hours, he learned more about Harry than he’d ever known about anyone, and as he ran home in the dawn light, a thought came to him as if delivered by an unseen hand. This would not be the last time he saw Harry Boddicker.

  * * *

  The ding of Harry’s computer signaled a visit to the website. The sound was always a tonic. It meant work, the challenge of putting the puzzle of a person’s life together, and money. Harry had discovered an appreciation for money only after he’d started working with Geiger and making a lot of it. The money was useful, of course, but it was also a salve for the shame over how he made it.

  Harry had never been present at a session, but he’d come to understand that for Geiger, the work wasn’t about money. God knows what it was about, but Harry never asked. That would be like asking Van Gogh why he painted, or asking Jack the Ripper why he went out for a stroll at night. In time Harry realized that Geiger had to do it, and like everything else about the man, this intrigued Harry. He dimly remembered that feeling, the thrill of a powerful undertow that could pull him out to some roiling sea. Geiger, for all his stoic strangeness, reminded Harry of what passion used to feel like.

  Harry watched the website on his screen. Ninety-five percent of the hits on DoYouMrJones.com were Dylan fans, who found a home page with a picture of the singer, but the bell meant someone had clicked on “password” to venture deeper into the site. The password had to be a five-word phrase extrapolated from the letters of “melon,” Harry’s favorite fruit. If they got the password right, it meant they had a legitimate referral.

  Harry sipped his coffee and smiled when the current visitor entered “Men everywhere live on nuts.” Not bad, he thought. Of course, no one had ever matched Carmine’s first log-in, in 1999. “Minestrone, eggplant, linguine, ossibuchi, nougat.” A classic five-course Italian meal from a man whose appetite and sense of humor
were as big as his sense of vengeance, who lived life the same way he wielded power—to the fullest.

  The site accepted the phrase and asked for a referral. When the visitor typed in the name—Colicos—Harry recognized it. Colicos was a scrap metal baron who had used Geiger twice in the past. Harry waited while the visitor followed the instructions and provided his name, cell phone number, the identity of the Jones, and the reason why the client needed Geiger’s services.

  Again Harry gently squeezed the lump in his groin and considered having someone look at it. But he hated going to doctors almost as much as knowing that he had a reason to do so. Geiger had taught him how to create various false identities, but health insurance was too dicey for someone living off the grid, so he paid his medical bills in cash. He did not relish the thought of doling out large sums for exams, tests, biopsies, and all the rest.

  The web page filled up with information, and then another tone signaled the visitor’s exit. Harry hit “print” and checked his watch. Lily would be arriving soon.

  His gaze went to her photograph on the corner table; curled up on a couch, she looked out at him with her mischievous, “I know a secret” smile. But his sister hadn’t looked like that in a very long time. Ten years ago, he had put her in a home, and every other Sunday since then he had made the trip to New Rochelle to visit her. Sitting beside her while she stared at nothing and sang snippets of old songs, he listened to a voice that sounded ancient, as if she’d already lived a dozen lifetimes. She seemed to have become something out of a science fiction movie, a being taken over by an alien life-form, its movements awkward, its speech quaint and disjointed, its motives unknowable.

  Even so, Harry was convinced that Lily maintained a firm grip on the absurdity of her life, and her persistence haunted him. Harry had tried to train himself to not think about Lily, but his sister had become a squatter in his nearly vacant conscience, refusing to be evicted. His guilt was not about the business of surrogacy—he paid a fortune to keep her in the home. Instead, he was tormented by the serrated truth that had lodged itself in him long ago. He wasn’t shelling out over a hundred thousand dollars a year because he loved Lily; he was doing it because he wished she were dead. These days, six figures seemed to be the going rate for Boddicker guilt.

  The downstairs buzzer sounded. Harry walked to the door and pressed the entry button on the wall. Four months ago, in a sudden act of contrition, he’d arranged to have Lily brought to his place by one of the psychiatric nurses on her day off and had found that, compared to visiting the blanched desert of her room in the home, bringing Lily to his apartment had a temporary numbing effect on his angst. Recently he had scheduled another one-night sleepover—for today.

  Harry opened the door and stepped back a few feet, listening to footsteps ascending the stairs. A twenty-something woman with black, scarecrow hair, wearing green culottes and high-tops, came into the doorway’s frame with a small, canvas overnight bag in hand.

  “Hi, Mr. Jones.”

  “Hi, Melissa.”

  She turned, reaching a hand out to the unseen hall. “C’mon, Lily. Let’s go.”

  A soft, satin voice spoke: “Time to go.”

  “That’s right,” said the nurse, and pulled Lily into the apartment.

  Drugs and madness had made his sister gray and small. She was dressed in the short-sleeved pink blouse and lilac pedal pushers he’d bought for her a few years ago. Lily’s elbows, wrist bones, and cheekbones stood out prominently beneath her opalescent skin, and as always now, when Harry saw her he had to remind himself that she was six years younger than him.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked.

  “Same,” said Melissa. “Fine. Right, Lily?”

  There was a stillness about her; hardly anything seemed to move, as if the psychosis was a cancer that had dissolved all her muscles and tendons and nerves. She looked light as air—a giant, beautiful origami figure. When her deep-set blue eyes finally shifted and settled on Harry, they gazed at him without a hint of recognition.

  Harry stepped toward his sister. Her gaze was fixed on the small hollow beneath his Adam’s apple. He raised a hand and tapped the top of her head with his knuckles three times. “Anybody home?”

  Lily’s lips bent ever so slightly at his touch.

  Harry glanced at Melissa. “We used to do that as kids.”

  His sister walked to the wide picture window. “I like it here,” Lily said. “Everything moves so fast. I like seeing everything move so fast.”

  The East River, barely disturbed by a ripple, carried a near-perfect reflection of Manhattan’s skyline upon it. On summer days like this the city seemed to have a shining twin that lay just beneath the water.

  Lily leaned her forehead against the glass and put her palms up flat against it. She began to sing haltingly in light, dancing syllables.

  “Way down … below the ocean…”

  Harry joined in. “Where I want to be, she may be.”

  Lily seemed deaf to his participation.

  “Know that song, Melissa?” asked Harry. “‘Atlantis’?”

  “Nuh-uh,” she said. “Any coffee?”

  “In the pot. Make fresh if you like.”

  Harry sat back down at the desk, and his chest rose and fell with a deep breath and a deeper sigh. He took the sheet of paper from the printer. As he read, he started nodding. He liked what he saw.

  “Melissa, I may have to go out for a while.”

  “Okay. We’ll be okay—Lily’s fine.”

  Harry looked up with a tilted grin. “Yeah,” he said. “Lily’s fine.”

  6

  They sat at a booth in the diner on Columbus Avenue. Harry had been coming here since the 1980s, when he and his sister lived nearby. Now it was a twice-a-week breakfast place for him and Geiger. Harry would have his cheddar omelette and bacon, and Geiger would have black coffee. Harry would talk about the business—a tweak to the e-mail codec, new customized spyware, a database he’d hacked into—and Geiger would listen, sometimes responding with a one-sentence remark. Harry brought the Times, and when he was talked out they’d both read the paper. Harry never took the first section because Geiger read only the letters to the editor.

  Harry emptied a third thimble of cream into his coffee to placate his stomach as Geiger opened the folder and extracted three sheets of paper. The first was the printout of the potential client’s website entry. His name, Richard Hall, and cell phone number were followed by his request:

  I represent the owner of a private art collection. Two days ago a painting, a de Kooning, was stolen. We believe the thief is an art dealer who has served as a go-between in acquisitions for my client. My client feels that notifying law enforcement will not necessarily help recover the painting, so I have contacted you.

  Harry watched Geiger’s gray eyes slide back and forth. Even after working for him for more than a decade, Harry knew little about Geiger. He’d pieced together a scant profile from random remarks—not from New York, a music lover, vegetarian, didn’t own a TV, lived somewhere in the city—but he had long ago stopped asking even the most casual personal questions. Whatever more particular sense of the man Harry had came from a tilt of Geiger’s head while listening, the speeds and patterns of his fluttering fingers, the occasional comment about a job. Harry had come to view the nature of their bond in the simplest of terms: need. Geiger had, for reasons Harry did not understand, entrusted him with a significant part of his life, and Harry had put the task of serving him at the empty center of his own. They were the strangest of partners—joined at the hip, light-years between them.

  Richard Hall’s entry continued:

  The man in question is David Matheson. He is 34 years old, resides at 64 West 75th Street, New York, New York, and his Soc. Sec. number is 379-11-6047. I have him under surveillance and would be able to “deliver” him, as I am told this is how the process works. It is likely that Matheson had a buyer in place before the theft, so it is crucial that this be dealt with qu
ickly. I am authorized to pay an additional $200,000 should you retrieve information leading to the painting’s recovery. Please contact me by 2:00 p.m. or I will look for someone else. Sincerely, Richard Hall

  Geiger put the first sheet down.

  Harry grinned. “Not bad, huh? Would you do an asap?”

  “One step at a time, Harry. We have a way of doing things.”

  Harry nodded and stifled a frown and a burp.

  The other pages were research on both the Jones and Richard Hall. Harry had hit a dozen different veins, as he liked to call them, while digging up information about David Matheson. He’d earned an undergraduate degree in international studies and a master’s in art history, and had worked for ten years as an art appraiser, consultant, and buyer. He was on watch lists in Greece and Egypt for meeting with suspected black marketeers in antiquities. He had lived in New York for thirteen years and was divorced; his only child, a son, lived with his mother in California. All Harry had on Hall was his birth date and Social, his honorable discharge from the National Guard in 1996, and thirteen years of FICA contributions from Elite Services Inc., an investigative outfit in Philadelphia.

  Rita, the waitress with the bleached platinum beehive who often served them, arrived with her coffee pot. She knew not to bother talking to Geiger. With him it was always the same—black coffee, two refills, and hardly a word. Sometimes his gaze would meet hers, but there was no invitation in it. At first she’d taken his manner as coldness, but in time she’d seen her mistake: she’d interpreted his lack of warmth as the presence of its opposite, where, in truth, there was no emotion at all. She slid his cup over and poured, then slid it back and looked to Harry.

  “Darlin’?”

  Harry waved the offer away. “Already over my limit, Rita, and I’m paying for it.”

  “Want the usual for breakfast, Harry?”

  “Nothing today, hon.”