The Confessor

by Mark Allen Smith

  ‘Outside?’ she said.

  Harry got up and they walked through the living room. He realized he’d not seen a photograph anywhere, of anyone. Christine opened a set of glass doors and they stepped outside, onto a semicircled stone patio. The dampness in the night was keeping a touch of the day’s warmth from dying. The wash of light from inside painted shadows blacker than the dark on the small backyard. He could make out the silhouette of the fence-top and the oak bench where they had made love sitting up after her parents had gone to sleep – silently, his hand over her mouth when she came – because Christine’s bed-springs squeaked too loudly. They’d had no real way of knowing for certain, but later on, they had decided it was the night Sophie had been conceived.

  Christine sipped her wine and studied Harry’s profile. Its gentleness had always fit his manner, but his presence was like a whirlwind, whipping things up inside her and tossing them about.

  ‘How did you get the scar?’ she asked.

  Harry turned to her, and his hand went to his forehead – fingertips on the thin, two-inch seam that ran out of his hairline. Carmine called it Harry’s mark of Cain.

  ‘Everybody should have one,’ he’d said. ‘Tells the world you paid your dues – so do not fuck with me.’

  Harry grinned. ‘I thought about telling people I got it in a sword fight over the honor of a fair maiden, but I got mugged in Central Park. A year after you left. I was drunk. They would’ve killed me – but someone came by and beat the hell out of them. Man named Geiger.’

  ‘Jesus, Harry . . .’

  ‘Saved my life.’

  ‘Geiger? Like the counter?’

  ‘Uh-huh. We became friends. Close friends.’ A window in a house beyond the fence went dark, and it pulled him back toward another time when he felt lighter, free of weariness, without a coterie of ghosts following him about. ‘This is pretty nice.’

  ‘It’s been years since anyone’s been out here with me.’

  His head slowly leaned toward her. She didn’t move to meet him, but she didn’t lean back, either, so he continued in – and their lips met in a kiss. Halfway through its five-second life, Harry’s mind tapped him on the shoulder. He straightened up. A gloomy little grin came out.

  ‘No, huh?’

  Christine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Harry.’

  ‘It’s okay. It was a very nice kiss.’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  Every heart has both warden and prisoner – tasked with keeping the dreadful and cruel under lock and key while they try and escape. Christine’s diligence failed her for a moment – and her eyes welled with tears.

  ‘Harry . . . This isn’t good for me. I keep everything in its place, nailed down tight. You being here – you bring her with you.’ She blotted her eyes with the heels of her palms before the tears could fall. ‘Seeing you . . . It’s wonderful. But I can’t have you here. I need you to go. Please don’t be angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t tell me if you were.’ She smiled and then softly stroked his cheek. ‘Those last years . . . your drinking . . . How terrible for you – to love me so, and suddenly hate me at the same time. And you never said a word.’

  There were times when Harry could still feel the bourbon’s burn at the back of his throat – the booze’s opening act making its announcement: ‘It’s on its way. You’ll be cool in a minute. We’re working on it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Chris . . . That’s not what happened.’ He walked out into the yard, out of the light. Some things were easier to say in the dark. ‘You left Sophie for a minute, something every parent does a zillion times a day – and something terrible happened. And you, being you . . . you had to find a reason – something to grab hold of so you didn’t go under. Something to try and make sense of it. And I always understood that. I got that. The “Why didn’t I . . . ?” The “How could I have . . . ?” The “If only I had . . .”’ He heard himself sigh. ‘But because there was no reason, you latched on to guilt and held on for dear life – and you couldn’t hold on to anything else . . . including me.’

  Christine felt the old chill – the shiver that slid quickly down her arms into her hands, the ague when there was no fever. She watched Harry step back into the light, and his blue, yearning smile broke her heart again.

  ‘I didn’t hate you, Chris . . . I missed you – and after a while I found out that when I was drunk I didn’t miss you as much.’ He shrugged. ‘We both found something else to hold on to . . . instead of each other. That’s what happened.’

  She opened the front door. ‘I used to wonder – maybe we didn’t love each other enough to get through . . . to hold us together.’

  Harry zipped up his coat. ‘I don’t think that’s true. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Harry. These days what’s true or not doesn’t seem as important to me as it used to. Shall I drive you?’

  ‘No. I’ll walk to the metro.’

  She leaned to him and brushed his lips with hers.

  ‘Goodnight, Christine.’

  ‘Goodbye, Harry. Take care.’

  He hesitated, wondering if he had anything else to say – words worthy of a last goodbye to someone you once adored – but she closed the door softly and stepped back into the dark.

  Through a window, Christine watched him turn and walk away, then went to a small breakfront, took out a bottle and poured a generous helping of cognac into a snifter. She sat down in a chair, and the tip of her forefinger began to slowly circumnavigate the glass’s rim, sending a low, mournful trill around the room. It suited her mood. He was right about the guilt . . . and all that came after. When you’re drowning, you grab hold of whatever a desperate hand finds and don’t let go. She rolled the glass in her palms. He was still the sweetest man she’d ever known – and she prayed he didn’t come back. She sniffed in the liquid’s fragrance. She was going to need all of it tonight.

  There were faint priestly collars of fog round the street-lamps and Rue Antoine de Saint Exupery felt like a Hollywood backlot – a perfect replica of the real thing where the short, square, whitewashed houses were plywood facades with nothing behind them and no one inside. Harry had sensed the possibility of a new beginning in Matheson’s basement – and this felt like part of it. Perhaps a beginning meant laying lingering things to rest – things torn loose from their natural place that drifted from past to present and back on the breeze of a whim . . .

  Most likely because his head was full of thoughts, as he neared the white van parked at the curb with the side door wide open his notice was cursory. Someone has forgotten to lock up, he thought – perhaps a drunkard or daydreamer or sad, preoccupied soul – and the possibility it was anything more did not occur until two hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him down and into the van. When his face and chest met the backseat two other hands grabbed his shoulders and dragged him in deeper. He felt the full weight of the first assailant coming down on him, fixing him there. There was that rental car aroma – the mild mint they sprayed in the interior for the next customer.

  ‘Now,’ said a man with an elegant French accent – was there any other kind? – and as the needle plunged into his neck Harry got a whiff of a familiar, singular chemical odor. It was propofol. Over eleven years, he’d injected dozens of Joneses with it. In another time and place, he would have appreciated the sublime irony. As it was, the stickler-for-detail in him started counting off the seconds of consciousness he knew he had left – no more than seven or eight, but more than enough to consider the astonishing depth of his stupidity. And then – he wasn’t there anymore.

  As the Frenchman came in from outside, the young night clerk looked up from the anatomy textbook on the counter and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘Bonsoir, monsieur . . .’

  Victor pointed at the rows of door keys. ‘Quarante–huit.’

  ‘Ah. Monsieur . . .’ He glanced at the computer monitor beside the tome. ‘. . . Fontaine.’ He took a key off the rack and handed
it to the Frenchman. ‘Bonne nuit, monsieur.’

  ‘Bonne nuit.’

  The elevator was waiting. He stepped in and pressed ‘4’ and began his ascent. He yawned, and checked his watch. One-twenty. When he was young and worked the docks they called him ‘Diamant’ – because he was harder than a rock and never wore down. Now, he could still go round the clock with a clear head, but his body sent him messages – yawns, and twinges and spasms in muscles that protested the mind’s disregard for their age. He looked up, and in the burnished brass wall saw his reflection – a slight tilt of a frown, the raised right brow a crescent moon hovering over an eye. A woman in Cologne he’d had for a week once told him he always looked puzzled about something – and displeased that he was. She’d been closer to the truth than she knew – but this job was proceeding well. Step one, done. Step two, now. Step three would be the most difficult, but its unique elements were appealing. After all these years, that was a plus. The elevator opened and he walked out toward his room.

  Matheson sat at a desk before his laptop, reading the whistleblower’s original e-mail for the hundredth and last time, trying to soak up any more sense of the writer. He’d sent the rendezvous info two hours ago, and received a response ten minutes later. I think 12.00 more acceptable for me, no? more of crowds there then. More people, I feel safer. Tell me. Matheson liked the logic and anxiety in it. It felt sincere. He’d written back in agreement and received a reply in a few minutes. Much thanks. I be there 12.00.

  He closed the e-mail and stared at the desktop image – eight-year-old Ezra smiling, violin under his chin. Matheson stubbed his cigarette out and took a sip of Grey Goose. Every time he looked at the photo he felt a hollow thud in his chest. His rough sigh was like a trigger bringing his hands to the keys, and he opened up the special e-mail system Harry had created and started to type.

  Hi. Just saying hello – and I miss you. I hope you’re doing okay.

  He picked up his vodka, sat back, and frowned.

  Victor came out into the hall with a black tote bag, walked to a door marked SORTIE, and headed down the stairs. At the third-floor landing he stepped into the hall and walked to an unnumbered door. He stood for a moment, until he trusted the silence, then opened the door and went inside, and came out pushing a three-foot-square laundry cart with a large canvas bag hanging from the frame. He rolled it down the hall to the door marked 3B and put his ear to it – then took out Harry’s room key . . .

  Matheson leaned back to the laptop and typed again.

  I’m just going to keep telling you I’m sorry, and that I love you, very much. I would have tried you on Harry’s vidchat – but I’m out of the country and it’s 7.30 AM where you are, so I figured Mom was still home and you were getting ready for school. Love you, Dad.

  He heard Harry’s door open and close. ‘Hey . . .’ he said, clicked ‘send’ and stood up. ‘We’re set for tomorrow. Noon. Notre Dame.’ Their rooms’ adjoining door was open. ‘So you wanna tell me who this dinner date was?’ He came through the doorway. ‘This being the City of Love, I’d like to think it was—’

  A fist swung around and slammed into his stomach. He doubled over and crumpled to the carpet on all fours. Matheson’s head drooped, rasping, sucking for air, all pure reflex now.

  Victor knelt beside him. “Breath slowly.”

  ‘. . . Whaaaaaa . . . ?’

  ‘It is safer for when I inject you.’

  Matheson’s head slowly cranked ninety degrees till he could see his attacker. In his expression, Victor saw confusion, and pain, but no fear. And perhaps a hint of a grin that appreciated the truly absurd moments of life.

  Victor nodded. ‘Good enough,’ he said, grabbed Matheson by the hair, and emptied a syringe’s milky contents into his neck. ‘Relax.’ Matheson’s lids stretched open to their max in an attempt to fight the drug’s power – and Victor saw new anger in the eyes, and nodded. ‘I understand, my friend.’

  Victor pressed the basement floor button – ‘SS’ – the elevator doors closed and he watched the floor numbers light in descent. 3 . . . 2 . . . Matheson was in the laundry cart beside him, the sheets from his and Harry’s beds piled on top of him. He reached down and fluffed them up a bit, then eyed his watch again. Night was always preferable for the work. Darkness, far fewer people to deal with, less traffic . . .

  He heard the elevator’s ding before he felt it stop – and looked up. ‘RC’ was lit. ‘SS’ – basement level – was still dark. The door slid open and a silver-haired woman in an evening gown stared back at him. Victor had a partial view of the night clerk at the counter behind her, across the lobby, bent over his textbook, chin in his palm.

  The woman glanced down at the laundry cart. ‘Going up, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘Going down. I shall send it back up,’ he said, and smiled – until the door closed.

  The woman turned to the clerk. ‘You clean the rooms here at this hour? My . . . I hope you pay the poor things overtime.’

  The clerk looked up wearily – and watched the ‘SS’ symbol light up above the elevator. His brow became a field of furrows . . .

  In the alley, Dewey leaned against the van’s hood. The engine was running and he liked the feel of the vibration against his lower back. It hadn’t been the same since the IED on the road out of Kandahar. They had told him he’d need two weeks in a brace, but after three days in traction he’d started worrying that the worse-offs thought he was a weak dick – and he was going stir-crazy anyway – so he said he wanted to go back out.

  The hotel’s side door was a metal roll-up. He’d sprayed it with WD-40, so when it started to rise the noise was minimal. Victor came out pushing the cart.

  ‘Let’s move.’

  Dewey nodded, but he was looking at something inside the basement. ‘Victor . . .’

  ‘Hey! Attendez!’ demanded a voice – and Victor whirled around and drove his fist into the night clerk’s throat – two hard, rapid, left-handed jabs. The clerk made a single harsh, cloying sound – like a cat trying to spit out a hairball – but didn’t even have time to raise his hands before he hit the ground like a bag of bones.

  Dewey stared at the body. The hair was up on the back of his neck. It had looked so cool. Like a movie.

  ‘Move, Dewey,’ Victor said, as he leaned down and grabbed the clerk’s arms and started dragging him back inside.

  Dewey wheeled the cart to the back of the van and opened the doors. Harry lay inside, motionless – silver duct tape across his eyes and mouth and securing his ankles and wrists together. Dewey pushed the bed sheets aside and grabbed Matheson, who was taped in the same fashion, lifted him out and shoved him in beside Harry. He closed up and got in the driver’s seat. He was replaying the short scene of crisp, cool violence. Victor pivoting, the left springing out – wap! wap! – the guy going down . . . Perfection.

  Victor came back out, eyeing the van with a frown. He came round and slid into the passenger’s side.

  ‘You should have backed it in,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The van. You back it in when time is not an issue – so you don’t have to back it out when it may be. Stupid mistake. Drive.’

  Dewey had the wince of a scolded pupil. ‘You’re right. Sorry.’ He put it in gear and backed down the alley with a pro’s skill, smoothly shifted on the street and headed uphill for Rue de Rennes. ‘Just so you know, man . . . I could’ve backed out of there with my eyes closed doing ninety if I’d had to.’

  ‘I understand, Dewey – but you realize that’s not the point.’

  ‘Yeah. I do.’ Dewey stopped at the red light. Victor took out his gold lighter, and rubbed away a smudge. Lausanne . . . 1994 . . . a tobacco store on the Grand Pont . . . the South African arms dealer . . . snatched from a parking lot and delivered to the NIA. He lit a cigarette, lowered his window and stared out. In one of the hundreds of nearby apartments ‘Hey Jude’ was being played very loudly.

  Dewey watched Victor flex the fingers of his
lethal hand a few times. ‘He saw the van,’ said Dewey. ‘Won’t he call the police when he wakes up?’

  Victor took in a long pull of smoke. ‘He is not going to wake up.’

  There was a sudden ping in Dewey’s brain – like a sonar pulse suddenly detecting something massive, unseen but very near. Dead people hadn’t been mentioned as part of this job. He’d had four gigs. No one had died.

  ‘Green,’ said Victor.

  Dewey hit the gas and turned left, south. The air held the promise of rain, but was holding back, waiting.

  ‘Question,’ Dewey said.

  Victor sighed, and turned to him. ‘Ask.’

  ‘Why the Adam’s apple? Not so easy a target. Why not hammer him in the face?’

  ‘Because you’re more likely to break your hand doing that.’

  Dewey nodded. ‘Got it.’ He settled back, letting the feel of the car rule his movements. The biggest issue he’d had in the job was chilling on the machine. He liked speed, torque, using the vehicle – but in this line of work, it turned out that driving was 90 percent lay-back.

  Victor made him nervous. He’d known guys back in the unit who were good at killing – who didn’t blink at it – but Victor was so . . . smooth.

  ‘Dewey . . .’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How did you get into this business?’

  Dewey thought he heard a touch of something in Victor’s voice – like someone trying to sound polite asking a garbage man how he became a philosophy professor.

  ‘You know . . . I knew somebody who knew somebody. Like that.’ He cruised past a car and got back into the right lane. ‘Listen, man . . . I don’t want to piss you off with my questions. I’m not gonna do this as long as you – I’m only in till I’m flush enough to get out – and I’m just trying to pick your brain is all. In the Army, you figure out once you’re in the shit that learning from the timers is how to stay in one piece – so that’s why the questions. You want me to stop – just say when.’