Zanni went back a few pages and scanned one.
SOAMES: All right. You used the awl and the bat on him, to seemingly little effect. Then what?
DALTON: A straight razor. It was his. I found it there at his place before he came to. He had all this stuff – amazing stuff he used in the work. The man’s mind was incredible. But the razor – it was beautiful. Antique. Had an inscription – a ‘From Jane with love to Jack’ kind of thing. I can’t remember the real names. But I saw all the scars on him, the cuts, and I started thinking somebody had used the razor on him when he was a kid.
SOAMES: What kind of scars?
DALTON: What kind? Jesus . . . You’ve never seen anything like it. Dozens of them up and down the backs of both legs. Perfect, precise. It was a thing of beauty. Really. A work of art. When I started using it on him, he went into a kind of trance, and said some things. ‘Your blood, my blood, our blood’ . . . ‘It didn’t hurt, father’ – so I think his old man was the one who cut him. A ritual, for years. Maybe Mom watched. Who knows?
SOAMES: Anything else?
DALTON: Is there any word on him?
SOAMES: Geiger?
DALTON: Yes. Geiger.
SOAMES: We think he’s dead.
DALTON: You’re wrong. He isn’t dead.
SOAMES: Why? Is there something you know?
DALTON: He can’t be dead.
SOAMES: Why not?
DALTON: Because. He’s indestructible.
Zanni remembered Dalton’s smile when he said it. ‘He’s indestructible.’ It was not something she’d forget.
She dropped the papers to the floor. What does a child do with that kind of suffering and abuse? Do you become an alchemist and turn it into something else? She grabbed a few Raisinets from the bowl on the rim of the tub and tossed them in her mouth. Was it a What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger thing? Is that who Geiger was – taken to the nth degree? Did anything actually get to him?
She slid farther down and turned so her cheek rested against the cool porcelain, and closed her eyes. She wanted the release, but was tired and wished she didn’t have to do all the work. It’d been months since a man had touched her, so long that she had gone through her small cache of fantasies three or four times. Her hand slid down into the water, between her thighs. She tried to decide whether Geiger looked sexier with or without the beard . . .
4
Geiger stood with his back against the session room wall in overalls, long fingers tapping his thighs like frisky creatures that had crawled up his legs and attached themselves to his wrists. Hidden speakers delivered an audio loop – a snare drum and cymbal in crisp four-four time. On random beats the snare would hit a millisecond early or late, just enough to produce an unsettling mental flinch in the listener. He had brought the lights down to a murky dimness, so the Jones in the barber’s chair was a smudged silhouette and, more to the point, so was Geiger. He was dealing with a razor-sharp intellect, and Geiger wanted to blur the edges of things.
‘You’ve been Mr. Redding’s financial consultant for how long?’
‘Eight years. But you know that.’ The Jones’s voice had a thick, froggy quality. And he was right – Geiger did know – because his dossier had been extensive. Geiger knew the man suffered from vertigo and acid reflux and had made him drink a potion – 20 percent sodium hydroxide solution mixed with club soda and molasses. Geiger wanted him in a state of familiar distress, only heightened, and had asked the question because he wanted to hear the man speak, to gauge the extent of the irritant’s effect.
‘What happens when we’re done?’ asked the Jones.
‘When I retrieve the information, you’re put back in the trunk and returned to the client.’
‘Then what?’
‘That isn’t my concern. It’s not part of the job.’
It was ‘Then what?’ that Geiger wanted to hear. He was the master builder, and each response was brick and mortar for the house of fear he was building. Everything mattered in IR, and ‘Then what?’ meant the Jones was thinking beyond the present, considering events to come – possibilities more chilling than the now, more terminal in their nature. It was a useful building-block for the construction.
The Jones coughed, which set off a deep wince. ‘So when the trunk closes – that’s it for you? Out of sight, out of mind. No guilt?’
Geiger’s voice was a silk scarf wrapped around his answer. ‘About what?’
That brought an elegant curve to the Jones’s lips. In another place and time, it might have looked like a wistful smile, but now it struck Geiger as profoundly mournful.
‘I had a lot of guilt – at the start,’ the man said, ‘but you can get used to just about anything, don’t you think?’
Geiger homed in on the tone. Ennui? Remorse? Enlightenment? ‘It’s interesting you say that, Charles – because that concept is crucial to what goes on in this room.’
Geiger hadn’t asked where the money was. It wasn’t time yet. He pushed a button on the wall. The lights came up full-power, the shiny white linoleum surfaces of the room put out a jarring gleam – and the Jones clamped his eyes shut with a sideways wince.
‘“Now is the winter of my discontent,’” he said, and slowly opened his eyes. A flicker of corrupt wisdom flared in them. ‘And it’s been a very, very long winter.’
His toned body, naked except for plaid briefs, was strapped to the chair at the neck, ankles and wrists with steel-mesh belts. His curled, silver-flecked hair was a crown atop a face that showed more than a hint of excess. Geiger had his take on him: world-weary, a keen intelligence that often complements amorality, and, most importantly – a simmering resignation. Geiger wouldn’t have to create that feeling – just bring it to a boil. He walked to him and put two fingers on the jugular. The Jones’s heart seemed unperturbed at the situation.
‘This where the pain starts?’ asked the Jones. ‘The laying on of hands?’
‘Charles, what you need to understand is – being here is not primarily about pain. A man once said – “Pain is just the messenger. It reminds us of why we hurt.”’
‘Do you think I need to be reminded of why I’m here?’
‘I’m not just speaking of your crimes. The more important point is – you put yourself here. Almost every Jones ends up here for the same reason: They want the world to make them more than they are.’ Fingers of Geiger’s left hand started tapping a triad.
A sigh drifted out of the man’s lips. It sounded like the tide gliding up to shore.
‘Redding’s just one of a dozen,’ he said, and the act of swallowing clearly hurt. ‘I’ve stolen almost fifteen mill, all told.’ There was no boast in the statement.
‘Irrelevant information. I don’t need to know that,’ said Geiger, and took the Jones’s left hand in his. ‘It’s important you be focused, Charles, so watch closely.’ He put his thumb on the fleshy webbing between the thumb and forefinger. ‘The thenar space.’ He pressed his thumb into it. ‘Applied pressure is said to relieve pain in the head and back.’ He moved his thumb to the space between the third and fourth metacarpals. ‘But move just one inch, to the lumbrical muscles . . .’ He shoved his thumb in and the Jones arched violently against his binds as a doggish growl bounced from one wall to another.
Geiger let go. The man was breathing deeply through his mouth, trying to flush the pain away, but it only worsened the fire in his esophagus. Geiger leaned down nose to nose.
‘If you offer unsolicited information in this room, it is unacceptable. Focus is essential.’
He gave the barber’s chair a push, and it began to whirl round, completing each cycle in about two seconds. The Jones began to moan and squeezed his eyes shut.
‘Keep your eyes open, Charles. You are not allowed to close your eyes.’
The man’s lids rose over skittish eyeballs. The flush on his face was draining, red turning to stark white. His breath took on a ragged rhythm. His vertigo was kicking in.
‘I’m going
to throw up . . .’
‘If you close your eyes – what follows will be worse.’ Geiger’s head turned until the vertebrae clicked. ‘Keep your eyes on me. The world is a blur, except for me.’
The Jones’s chin dipped to his chest like a sad drunk. ‘Stop it – please!’
‘I need to see that you are focused, Charles. Right now, I am the only anchor you have. Look at me. Find me every time you come around.’
The man’s head rose like a puppet’s. ‘Christ . . . I’m gonna black out . . .’
‘Look at me.’
‘Jesus . . .’ The slow, breathy release of the word stripped it of meaning. It sounded primal, nonlingual. Another revolution finished.
‘Look at me.’
‘I am!’
Designs of light flashed on his steel-mesh restraints as the Jones spun. The audio loop’s drum and cymbal tried to enforce a cadence on the fluid motion, and Geiger considered the flow of time, and man’s need to break it down into finite increments – to measure what has no size, to control what has no form, so at any moment he can declare it exactly so many seconds and minutes of an hour in a month of a year – and he thought of his clockless, timeless childhood, when nothing was measured but the precise allocation of pain. He stepped forward and grabbed the chair. The Jones swallowed between short, coarse huffs. The skin of his cheeks and forehead glistened in the lights.
‘Do you still feel like you want to vomit?’ Geiger said, and watched surprise and slow realization dawn in the Jones’s eyes.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Good.’ Geiger glanced at the chrome cart and its display – a bat wrapped with foam rubber, a Smith and Wesson six-inch Tanto knife, and a SeaChoice air horn. The Jones’s gaze followed his. Geiger was certain none of the implements would come into play, but the Jones didn’t know that. He began to stroll the room’s perimeter.
‘We will get to the truth, Charles – perhaps in more ways than one might assume.’ He hit a button on a wall panel and the audio ceased. ‘You are a highly intelligent man. Has it occurred to you – that what happens from this point on depends almost entirely on you?’
The Jones laughed grimly, and it set off a short hacking fit. ‘So I’m the one calling the shots, huh?’
‘I wasn’t speaking about control. I was speaking of cause and effect. Do you understand the difference?’
Geiger had created categories for everything that occurred during a session. Initial body languages, muscular and facial responses to interrogation, vocal tones and rhythms, emotional manifestations, delay and misdirection tactics, forms of denial – eighteen categories in all, each containing dozens of variations. He was an ever-evolving, living text on torture – student, historian, expert. But as he watched the embezzler’s head cock a few degrees, and the emerging smile – he didn’t think they fit into a particular grouping.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ said the Jones.
‘Negotiation isn’t part of the process.’
‘I’m not negotiating. I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ the man said. ‘I know how this ends. I’ve known for years. I just didn’t know when. That’s the tricky part – not knowing when. So how’s this? I ask a question and you answer, then you ask a question and I answer, and so on – and in the end you get what you need. That’s fair, right?’
Again, Geiger studied the voice – sifting through it for signs of manipulation. The man had made a career out of duplicity . . . But he saw an opening, and a path. Unorthodox, but expedient.
‘What do you want to ask me?’
The Jones’s smile broadened. ‘Have you ever been wrong?’
‘In what sense?’
‘You finished a job, gave the client the information they wanted – and at some point the client calls and says the information was wrong. That what you believed was the truth – was a lie. That kind of wrong.’
‘No. Where is the money you embezzled from Mr. Redding, Charles?’
The Jones didn’t hesitate. ‘Falstead Channel Islands Bank and Cayman Royal Bank. Three accounts in each.’ He sighed, and his head listed a few degrees. Geiger was uncertain why. Maybe exhaustion – or relief.
‘How do you do it?’ asked the man.
‘How is it I haven’t been wrong?’ Geiger turned his head to the left until he got a click. ‘Do you know how a piano is tuned?’
‘No.’
‘The piano tuner uses a tuning fork, today often an electronic device, to set one note out of eighty-eight to the correct pitch, usually A above middle C – then, by ear, tunes every other note in relation to that first note. If the harmonics don’t coincide perfectly, a master tuner can hear it – can feel the slightest fluctuations in the air. In IR, Charles, truth is A above middle C, and I have perfect pitch. I know a lie when I hear it.’ His head turned right. Click. ‘What are the names and numbers on the accounts?’
‘The name on the Cayman Island accounts is Earl Kent. K – E – N – T. The Channel Island accounts’ name is Byron Keats. K – E – A – T – S. I don’t remember the account numbers, but they aren’t necessary. Go online to the banks, enter the account name and the password – Richard The Third – one word, no spaces . . . and you’re in.’
Geiger stepped forward until his knees almost touched the man’s. His gray eyes were still. The whole world was silent. Then his right hand rose from his side and reached toward the man. The Jones’s fear reflex pushed him back against the seatback.
‘Woah, woah . . . I was telling the truth.’
Geiger’s hand rested on the man’s neck. ‘I know,’ he said, and undid the strap. The man rolled his head – and Geiger started toward the door of the viewing room.
‘That’s it?’ said the Jones. ‘No more questions? We’re done?’
‘I’m not a confidant, Charles – or a priest.’ Geiger reached for the doorknob.
‘Maybe you are. Maybe you’re my father confessor. Ever think of it that way?’
Geiger stopped. He had never spoken to a Jones after the retrieval, but he was turning round now. ‘Is there something else you have to tell me, Charles?’
The man’s countenance softened. ‘I have a hundred things to tell you. A thousand things. And – I have one last question.’
Geiger felt the pull of the supplication, despair tugging at his sleeve, and came back to the Jones.
‘All right. Ask me one last question.’
The Jones’s eyes suddenly took on a flat gloss of lifelessness – a dead man’s eyes, wide open, powerless to ever close again.
‘Tell me,’ the man said. ‘Do you remember her?’
Geiger awoke. The muscles in the back of his neck were growing taut, and the dots of light were floating around him. The post-dream/pre-migraine aura had come to call, on schedule. He sat up on the mattress and stood. The floor’s concrete was cold, the sealant smooth like new ice, and the planet accommodated his listing as he walked to his desk and sat down. The chair’s leather was cool against his bare skin. He clicked on his laptop’s icon of a microphone. He didn’t know how far he’d get before the storm hit – the hot tendrils were starting to wend their way down from the top of his skull.
‘Dream seventeen,’ he said.
Since July Fourth his ritual of recurrent dreams had continued, but their nature had changed – no longer a child’s quests to unknown destinations where his body ultimately, literally, fell apart. Now, they were authentic replays of past IR sessions – until some demon driver took the wheel and steered them down a route of shadows into another realm, always to the same denouement. The same question. It was as if the river’s blunt, cold power had flicked off one switch in his subconscious and turned another on.
He sat back and closed his eyes. Without Dr. Corley in his life, Geiger had been keeping a verbal record of the new dreams in an attempt to simulate the psychiatrist’s presence and guidance – as if he was lying on the leather couch with Corley sitting behind him, legs crossed, pen and pad in hand, his quest
ions soft, simple steps down a path.
Was this dream like the others?
‘Yes . . . another IR session – completely realistic, until it shifts.’
You often use that word – shift – when you describe the dreams.
‘There’s a point where I can feel the texture starting to change.’
An actual physical sensation?
‘Like a pulling. Like changing gears.’
And the Jones asked the question?
‘The last thing he said, like they all do: “Do you remember her?”’
Can you get back in that moment – and describe your reaction. Anything – physical, emotional, cerebral . . .
‘I woke up as soon as he said it, before I could have any reaction at all. It’s as if the question, in the very asking, demands an answer and denies it at the same time . . .’
The hum in his head was rising to a howl. It was time.
He went into iTunes. His eighteen hundred CDs had been destroyed when his Manhattan house exploded last July, but years before Harry had begun storing their data in the cloud – dossiers, session transcripts and video, software, DoYouMrJones.com’s website info, audio files, Geiger’s CDs – so Geiger had retrieved and downloaded all his music from the cloud when he bought a new laptop.
He chose a playlist that melded dark and light, sublime and brutal – Hendrix, Mussorgsky, Liszt, Coltrane. When the pain burst into bloom, so would the music’s color and taste. He’d let the pain grow until it was all he felt – then mount the beast and ride it into the blackness until thought was gone and everything was white-hot sensation laced with a thousand hues of sound. Then he’d pluck a silver melody from the swirl and fashion it into a sword, and plunge it into the heart of the galloping beast – and kill it.
The Confessor Page 4