The Confessor

by Mark Allen Smith

  ‘Bonjour, monsieur.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Ah . . . An American. Is there something else you’d like?’

  ‘No. Are you Christine Reynaud?’

  There was something lacking in the question – an attitude, any hint of a reason for the asking. It was strange to hear.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  He rose from his stool, picked up the bag at his feet and came over beside her. ‘My name is Geiger.’

  There was an intensity coming off him – not sexual, not threatening, neither hot nor cold. It seemed more like a natural state. The name fired a synapse in her brain, and it took about three seconds in search mode to find an association.

  ‘Geiger . . . You’re Harry’s friend.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, this is strange. Harry’s in Paris, too. But you probably knew that.’

  ‘I thought he might have come to see you. Could we talk in private?’

  It was like a fuse being lit. She could almost smell the phosphorus. There was a 90 percent chance when someone asked ‘Could we talk in private?’ that what followed could likely blow a hole in a life – and that thought straightened her spine.

  ‘My office. Come.’

  They walked to the back of the café and stepped inside a small room with two file cabinets, a cluttered desk and chair, and a half-sofa. She turned to him as Geiger closed the door – and she stated what was clearly a fact.

  ‘Something’s happened to Harry. Something bad.’

  ‘He’s been abducted. Harry and another man.’

  Abducted. The word stretched her face. It wasn’t a term heard very often in conversation. The fuse continued to sparkle as it burned down toward the bomb.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Someone wants to make a trade – them for me.’

  The combined effect of bizarre information and its seemingly nonchalant delivery played havoc with her reaction. Things were tilting slightly, long-assumed ninety-degree angles becoming eighty-eight and ninety-two.

  ‘A trade? What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Christine . . .’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Explaining this would take a long time, and I have very little time – so I need you to tell me what you can.’

  Christine suddenly had company – a little troll in her mind’s corner, gnawing on itself, snickering. I’m back. Time to lose. Time to hurt.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘When was Harry here?’

  ‘Three nights ago.’

  ‘Did he say anything about why he was here? Where he was staying?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who he was meeting – and where – and when?’

  ‘No. Nothing. He just said he was here on a job.’ She was trying to get some feel for the man, but there was nothing about him to get hold of. He was smooth as ice. Harry had called him a close friend. The pairing seemed unimaginable to her.

  From his bag, Geiger took out a folder – the one Harry had given to him in the diner.

  ‘Before Harry left New York, he gave me these. A copy of his will . . . title to his apartment . . . documents for his safe deposit box.’ He dropped the folder on the desk. ‘Think again, Christine. Is there anything at all you can remember Harry mentioning that might be of any importance? His schedule? His itinerary?’

  The speed of things continuing to shift out of commonplace and swerve into preternatural was dizzying.

  ‘We talked about us. The past, mostly. And he mentioned you. But there was nothing more about his being here. I’m certain.’

  There is a certain sense of imbalance – almost a kind of loneliness – upon realizing you are in the presence of a complete stranger who is connected to you, who knows things about another dear to you, secrets with the power to alter feelings and long-set assumptions. She felt a twinge of something close to anger – and didn’t understand why.

  ‘I have to go,’ said Geiger, and he turned for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ She reached out and grabbed his arm. He looked back at her, and something in his eyes made her let go of him.

  ‘Just . . . just wait,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Find them.’

  ‘What about the police?’

  ‘This is a world you know nothing about, Christine. No police.’

  She watched his hands begin a tap dance on his thighs – crisp, contrapuntal steps.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘But – but how will I know what happened? I need to know.’

  ‘You won’t see me again. If Harry survives, my guess is you’ll hear from him. If you don’t – then you’ll still know what happened. Goodbye, Christine.’

  He opened the door and walked out. She watched him move across the café and out to the street. There was something about the way he walked. Some reinvention that accommodated all but a trace of damage. She closed the door and sat down on the couch.

  She suddenly wondered if he was crazy. He was talking about crazy things, and it felt contagious. That first stutter when your senses revolt – I can’t believe this is happening – and demand a do-over. The troll winked at her. Long time, no see.

  When Geiger got in the backseat of the cab and gave the young driver the address, he got a tilt of the young man’s shaven head and a raised brow in return.

  ‘Rue Questel?’ He scratched at his scraggly goatee. ‘Hmm . . . This is sure? You have gone before there?’

  ‘No,’ said Geiger, and showed him the tag on the key provided by Carmine’s associate.

  The cabbie shook his head and shrugged. ‘I dunno – but is okay.’ He grinned, and pointed at the screen of the dashboard GPS system. ‘We get there. Three-one-five Rue Questel.’

  He pulled away from the curb and turned east on Rue Claude Bernard, and Geiger sat back and let his head rest against the top of the seat. His gaze volleyed side to side, watching the buildings go by – taller and more massive here, eight stories of very old earth-toned stone and mortar, graced with rows of iron balconies that stretched without end like a Mondrian-made universe. Their changing intricacies rushing past him – spears, filigrees, curlicues, fleurs-de-lis – touched his sense of design and gave him a visual line to follow, but for hours he had felt his upper trapezius stiffening in his neck, very gradually, and now it was starting to tug at the base of his skull like a cranky child demanding attention.

  It was because of all the people. There were too many of them. The shifting and balancing of their questions and stares and needs and agendas. Words to parse, expressions to read, sifting through it all on the fly.

  The driver turned onto Avenue des Gobelins, and the sight of its queues of trees – thin-trunked with sparkling emerald leaves lacquered with rain – triggered a tactual moment, like a cool puff of wind in his face.

  The cabbie found Geiger’s stony face in the rearview mirror. ‘I’m always liking this street,’ he said. ‘Is pretty, no?’

  The flashing, glossy patches of green raced up at Geiger, surrounding him, whirling his mind round so it caught glimpses of a lost sylvan life, angled soft shafts of light through branches . . . woody aromas of sap and fecund soil . . . snatches of sound, an avian cry . . . the firm but soft touch of his hand in another’s . . . ‘You are the sun—’

  Geiger’s hand rose, thumb and forefinger finding his eyes and sealing them shut like a bedside priest with a just-departed corpse.

  He was like a novelist writing a story, fleshing out characters, their instincts, choices, and weaving a detailed plot, beat by beat – but resisting the urge to envision an ending to the tale. When Christine had asked ‘What are you going to do?’ the spare simplicity of the question made him realize why he hadn’t thought about how it all might end, why he had never visualized the possible denouements and played them out.

  It was because he already knew.

  Geiger opened his eyes. He turned his head to the right. The vertebrae were stubborn – bu
t he got the click.

  ‘Can you put on some music?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the cabbie. ‘What kind?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Carmine’s people had done well. The place on Rue Questel was three blocks off the Seine, in a small industrial park-like setting, concrete and gravel and power wires. It was away from two other buildings – one story high, fifty feet square, its blind, glassless windows filled with plywood. Its faded sign – ‘Chevier Carreaux Import’ – had four letters missing. It had been empty for some time – a dreary monument to failure.

  The cabbie pulled up in front and gawked at the sorry state of things. ‘Here? You be sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ Geiger leaned forward and held out a fifty-euro note, and the driver’s eyes popped. ‘Here is fifty now. I’ll be inside for about an hour. If you wait for me, I’ll give you another fifty. Understand?’

  ‘Cent euros?’ The driver’s grin came out like the sun. ‘I understand,’ he said, and took the bill. ‘I will be here.’

  ‘Good,’ said Geiger, and grabbed his bag.

  ‘Mister . . . May I ask why you come to this – eh, how do you say . . . dump?’

  Geiger opened the door. ‘I do renovation.’ He got out and headed for the back.

  He stepped inside, found the light switch, then closed the door and stood in the darkness – feeling the space, smelling it, playing the part of the Jones. The aroma of mildew was potent, and he could feel the dust rushing up to him on all sides. He turned on the lights.

  It was all pocked concrete – the walls and floor, the ceiling with its two sets of fluorescent fixtures. There were half a dozen saggy shelving units against one wall, and a large, cylindrical hot-water tank high on another wall atop four thin, metal stilts. Every five or six seconds a drop leaked from it and fell into a full pail on the floor beneath it, and the silence amplified each plop. The place felt like a dungeon. Or a tomb. And if events played out in a certain fashion, it would become the one place on the planet Geiger had resolved to never revisit. A session room.

  But the truth was – the nature of the physical space was irrelevant. Whatever customizing and constructing he might do here, now – what would ultimately define the place was his choice of action . . . and already being near-certain what his dreadful choice would be turned the screws in his neck even tighter.

  Geiger put his bag down. This would be as bare-bones as he had gone in a long time. Everything on the list was there. On a rectangular folding table were two small Bose speakers, three one-gallon jugs of water and a package of large plastic cups, a Smith and Wesson six-inch Tanto knife, and two dozen rolls of silver duct tape. On the floor were two gooseneck floor lamps, two radiant space heaters the size of suitcases, and a sturdy, un-upholstered wooden chair with arms and a shoulder-level back. He would have preferred that the back had been higher, but all in all, he could make it work. He would have to.

  In Dalton’s video, he had told Geiger ‘I am in your debt . . .’ – and the truth was . . . it was mutual. It had taken some time for Geiger to understand how deeply Dalton had changed him, and the irony – that after Corley had tried for so long to discover and deliver Geiger’s past to him, it had been Dalton’s torturing that had unearthed the treasure – a chest of buried memories, Geiger’s own Pandora’s box. With each of Dalton’s cuts the lid had opened higher, until a host of spirits had flown out and shown themselves . . .

  The ritual of the razor . . .

  The years of nights on the floor of the small closet his father had built for him . . .

  That last night on the mountain, his father trapped and crushed beneath the pick-up truck’s tire – dying, but too slowly for the man to bear – and his last request . . . his command that the boy use the knife. His father’s forefinger rising and tapping at his bloody chest.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘No, I won’t do it!’

  ‘Do as I say, son.’

  The boy’s forbidden tears starting to fall. ‘Father . . . Please!’

  ‘Is this what I’ve made of you? A weeping, useless little boy? Then go! Get out of my sight! I don’t want your face to be the last thing I see.’

  But there was still one spirit who chose to remain invisible, only giving him her voice . . .

  Geiger checked his watch. His schedule was holding. He thought of Dalton – waiting somewhere without concern, certain that Geiger would come, knowing he would arrive. In a world that very few lived in, it made a perfect kind of sense that he and Dalton should share an ending. They fit together like a dovetail joint.

  They were made for each other.

  Victor had brought the desk chair to the window of his room and been sitting for hours, glancing down at his crossword puzzle every so often as he watched the lobby entrance across the street. He’d never particularly cared for the stakeout aspect of the job – it took more out of you than a layman might guess – but he did find the act of observation worthwhile. For one thing, it had taught him that people were very much of a kind – that you could bring certain assumptions to the job – about a target, about tendencies and reactions – and be on solid ground. When people came out on their way to somewhere they moved faster – looking about, steps firm, more attentive of the world around them – than when they returned and went inside.

  For the past twenty minutes, he’d been listening to Zanni’s short, crisp huffs coming through the open door of their adjoining rooms, impressed by their precise timing and replication. If he hadn’t known it was her, he might have thought there was a steam-fueled robot in there performing a repetitive task. He got up and went into her room, and resumed his post by a window. She was on the floor, in sweat pants and a T-shirt, doing crunches, each identical to the one before it – the quintessence of the woman. He’d never known an agent more obsessed with control. It was an admirable trait, but double-edged.

  ‘How many do you do?’

  She spoke quickly, in between exhales. ‘I don’t count.’

  ‘How do you know when you have done enough?’

  ‘S’not about that.’ She lay back on the floor and let out a deep breath. ‘It’s just about doing them.’ She sat up and wiped the sweat from around her eyes. ‘I have to be able to trust my body. Always.’

  Victor smiled. ‘But no one else . . . ?’ It was a question that was a statement.

  ‘I work in a man’s world, Victor, and I’ve never met one who hasn’t tried to screw me – one way or another.’

  ‘I see. And me . . . ?’

  Zanni’s right brow rose like a scythe. ‘Let’s just say – I don’t mis-trust you as much as the next guy. How’s that?’

  ‘Ah. I am honored. And I need a smoke. Can you watch a few minutes?’

  Zanni got up, grabbed a fistful of M&M’s from a bowl on the desk and went to the window.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said, and started jogging in place.

  Victor headed for the door. ‘I think it interesting . . .’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That you make this difference between men and women.’ There was more than wisdom in Victor’s hint of a grin. ‘Is Zanni to be trusted?’

  Zanni turned to him, violet eyes flashing. ‘Don’t play me, Victor. You remember Zurich?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I had trusted our two “friends” there, would I be here having this conversation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then end of goddamn story.’ She swallowed to soften the hard edge of her voice. ‘Go smoke.’

  Victor opened the door. ‘Zanni . . . It is not like you – how should I say? – to push your buttons so easy. Relax.’ He closed the door behind him.

  She started lifting her knees high with every jog. He was right. Idle was her worst gear. She needed the sense of movement, of life happening. She fed off it. When she ran track in college, they started her on the eight hundred and fifteen hundred meters – but she couldn’t pace herself, she went zero to sixty and stayed there until she flag
ged at the end, so they moved her to sprints.

  She stared at the hotel. He was in there, designing his plans as he would one of his extraordinary wooden creations. The irony of it all was that, in a sense, she could trust him. She had no doubt that one way or another he would find his way to Dalton. She just had to pace herself, stay in a middle gear and follow his lead.

  18

  The cabbie pulled over one block east of the hotel. Geiger handed the driver a fifty-euro note.

  ‘Merci, monsieur, merci beaucoup.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Rémy.’

  ‘Rémy . . . I’ll pay you another hundred if you’re waiting for me here at eight-thirty tonight. It won’t be a long ride. Fifteen, twenty minutes. You understand eight-thirty?’

  ‘Oui!’ The young man’s smile popped open. ‘Yes, yes monsieur.’

  ‘Good.’

  Geiger stepped out and headed down the sidewalk in the lightening rain. Mingling smells – toasted, pungent, smoked – made him slow at a display window. Inside the small épicerie, people were two and three deep at the counters – pointing fingers, bringing food to their noses. The aromas, when united with the sights of baguettes and sourdough loafs, generous slabs of cheese, the rainbow-colored piles of vegetables, packed an almost tactile kick – reminding Geiger he hadn’t eaten in fifteen hours. This would likely be his last chance to do so for some time, so he opened the door and went in.

  The place rang with the music of voices – the call and response, inquiries, appreciative murmurs. Geiger moved to the crates of tomatoes – blood-red and bright yellow, striped orange and green, dark purple – against a wall beside the asparagus, lettuce and fennel. He gently squeezed a few between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Puis-je vous aider, monsieur?’

  Geiger turned to an old woman sitting on a stool, leaning on a black metal cane. She wore dark, thick-framed glasses, and over her cotton dress a checked white and sky-blue sweater buttoned all the way up to her wattled neck. She had the calm air of a matriarch who’d been retired – and it crossed Geiger’s mind that she must have asked that question almost a million times.