The Confessor

by Mark Allen Smith

  ‘I don’t speak French,’ he said.

  She cocked her white-haired head. ‘Ah. American. Hmm . . . my English, monsieur . . . comme ci, comme ça, oui?’ She smiled, wrinkles in her face stretching like rubber bands, got up off her stool and puttered over on her cane. She studied the multihued collection, picked up a yellow pear tomato and held it out to him. ‘Good, very good. Allez, essayez!’

  Geiger took the tomato and bit off half. It was firm and tasty.

  ‘Bien?’

  Geiger nodded as he chewed. ‘It’s good. Sweet.’

  ‘Très bien.’ She raised a purple-veined, knobby hand and wiped away a bit of juice from his chin with her thumb. ‘Alors . . .’ she said, ‘quoi d’autre?’ And as she looked down at the crates, she took hold of Geiger’s forearm – and the flesh to flesh connection sent goose-bumps skipping toward his neck.

  ‘Hmm . . . Roi Humbert – très bon. Noire charbonneuse . . .’

  Hers was the softest flesh he remembered ever touching his. Not that there had been many instances. The doctors’ fingers probing and pressing his body years ago, and, on occasion, Carmine’s huge hands affectionately patting his cheeks, and Ezra holding his hand – but the skin of the old woman’s palm was so soothing he thought he felt his heartbeat slow. He put the other half of the pear tomato in his mouth.

  ‘Beauté blanche . . . orange bourgouin . . .’ As she made her considerations about the tomatoes, she was running her hand up and down his forearm, a few inches north, a few inches south. It was the most natural of gestures, like petting a lap-cat, or stroking a sleeping child’s hair – Geiger was certain she was unaware of doing it – and it brought a sound, a whisper of a song, her voice, like a breeze through an open window rustling a curtain. Now it’s time to say goodnight . . .

  ‘Marmande ancienne. Mmm . . . very good.’

  Good night, sleep tight . . .

  As he had in the taxi, he felt the extraordinary coming closer – the coppery, earthy smell of the past, the indescribable, the magical, the unbearable . . .

  ‘I need to leave,’ he said.

  Dream sweet dreams . . .

  The old woman looked up at him. ‘Partir?’

  ‘Yes. To go. Now.’ He slowly rolled his head clockwise, trying to unlock things.

  The old wet eyes watched him as he took a ten-euro note from his pocket and put it in her hand.

  ‘You choose,’ he said.

  ‘Oui?’ She shrugged her frail shoulders. Her smile returned with a crimp of affection, and she patted his arm.

  He needed to be gone. To be alone.

  Geiger moved quickly down the block, stopping at the doors of small apartment and office buildings and pressing all the buttons on the directories, hoping someone would buzz him in without asking his identity or purpose via intercom. When he finally succeeded, he stepped inside to find it was an elevator building, and he was grateful for that. On the top floor, he unlocked the roof entry with his tools, and when he stepped outside he was met with the sight of the Eiffel Tower rising above the prairie of rooftops. He granted himself a few moments to stand there and gaze at its majesty.

  Its lights were on and the molten marvel painted the Paris dusk bronze – standing like a colossal sentinel. The wedding of space and structure, emptiness and elegance, the brazen commitment of design . . . It stirred his most constant of urges – to pull something out of the rubble within himself and forge it with hand and heart into a work of beauty – to try and erase all his monstrous acts, one by one, and in the doing remake himself. He could turn and go back through the door, ride the elevator down and take a train or a plane to anywhere. The world was that small – a spinning ball in the palm of his hand – and so immeasurably big that they would never find him . . .

  Down in the street there was a sudden squabble of horns – then two crunching metallic clacks. Geiger looked toward the sound – as volleys of angry French, in loud and dramatic fashion, rose up in the air . . . and then a gendarme’s seesawing wah-wah joined the ruckus. Chaos was playing social liaison again, making partners of strangers. Geiger glanced a last time at the tower, then started across the roofs.

  The gym bag was around his neck again, resting on his back. He pulled the ladder out to its full length, snapped the locks into place, and walked to the roof’s edge with it. Geiger got on his knees and slid the ladder across the eight-foot gap until its end rested on the ledge of his hotel’s roof. The first thing he’d do when he got back into his room was take a shower and try to unlock his neck.

  He started across the ladder on his hands and knees, rung to rung. Grab with the right hand, move the left leg, grab with the left hand, move the right leg . . . With each action there was a tiny give to the ladder, a sink of half an inch at the point of pressure. He had to look down as he crawled – his neck was too knotted to keep his head up and looking forward – and staring at the alley below began to put small bends in his vision, slight vertiginous shimmies. He considered whether he should try and get across before it worsened . . . or stop and see if it went away.

  He stopped.

  He closed his eyes and gray-black eddies started whirling on the backs of his lids – so he snapped them open again. He became aware of how tightly he was gripping the rung, the pronounced thump of the pulse in his hands and the short, snaky trembles come to life in his forearms. The spread of air on his flesh like another skin . . . the vestige of the tomato’s tart acid in his mouth . . . the rustle of breath in the nostrils suddenly a loud sea rush in his ears – his senses were taking hold, over-riding his automatic pilot, telling him this balancing act was just part of a much larger one – a man on a tightrope juggling doubt, and grief, and shame.

  He began sucking in deep breaths through his mouth and expelling them, like pumping up a deflating tire – and pushed himself forward. Grab with the right hand, move the left leg, left hand, right leg . . .

  . . . and then the hard, cold flatness of the ledge beneath his palm. He crawled on and let his blood come to rest, then pulled the ladder in, telescoped it back down to its compact square and frisbeed it over to the other roof. He sat down, took a roll of duct tape out of his bag and began wrapping lengths of it around his shoes, soles to tops, the sticky side out – and then did the same with his palms. He rose, faced the incline and then bent to it, palms against the surface, for a test. The tape would be of some help. Then he started up – left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot – toward the top.

  The water was cold enough. Ideally, at this temperature the shower’s spray would feel like needles piercing his skin, zapping the nerve endings, poking holes in the pain – but the pressure was lacking, and he’d had to stay longer than he wanted and settle for a kind of tentative numbing. He turned off the water and came out of the stall. He wouldn’t use a towel, so the coldness would stay with him as long as possible.

  There was a full-length mirror in an ornate, faux-antique frame on the opposite wall – and the carnage of July Fourth still beckoned to him. The webbed scar reconnecting the exploded flesh in his chest. Dalton’s crooked trio on his quad.

  Looking at them was not like staring at the vast array on his hamstrings and calves. That display, the proof of his father’s method and madness, had always been part of him, emblems of his past – but this damage was evidence that the world had found him, and now, he had finally received a formal invitation. Dalton might be the host, but it was fate who was throwing the party – and Geiger was the guest of honor, no RSVP necessary, come as you are.

  Shielded by room 404’s curtains, Geiger finished shooting the second set of wide shots and close-ups of the parking situation on the street – over four hours had passed since the first photo documentation – and then he sat down with his iPad, hooked the camera up to it and went through them all, comparing the two sessions. He deleted any vehicle that wasn’t in both sets, and that left nine – five cars, two commercial vans, and two motor-scooters. He created a separate file, arranging them in three rows of
three, and made the photos as large as possible for easier recognition, when and if the time came.

  Before the surgeries, he’d never been one for taking walks. Exercise in general had never held much appeal. It wasn’t the exertion, it was the sweating. Even as a child, he had found the feel of the clammy dampness on his skin unpleasant – it felt almost unnatural . . . the wet, bodily exudation – but after the operations Dr. Ling had preferred to have their discussions during walks around the clinic grounds and Dalton had found early on that the steady pace and conversation honed his flow of thoughts.

  It was during one of those walks that Dalton had his first hallucination – watching Dr. Ling’s face silently explode while explaining the neural-transmissive potential of synthetic-organic polymers. They had continued to walk on another fifty yards – the good doctor going on in his high-pitched, nasal way, his head a jumble of twisted, bloody debris between his shoulders – before Dalton had banished the figment.

  He turned the corner of the farmhouse, heading around back. Lavender and thistle invaders grew wild amid the rows of barren old grapevines, and beyond the field the forest rose up like a ribbed palisade at the base of the hills. There were creatures there – he’d heard cries and songs – though he rarely saw them. A fox in the very early dim of morning, a few hearty feral dogs, a wild boar . . .

  He felt strong, at ease, in control. The madness was part of him now, to be acknowledged and managed – like a non-fatal disease. History teemed with men whose delusions and raptures were not fetters but fuel for their quests and great deeds. The play was under way. He had no animus toward Boddicker and Matheson. They were like minor characters used to set up the plot in the first act, or provide the audience with necessary information . . . and now their presence in the unfolding drama was no longer required. Shakespeare would send them on some far-away errand – or kill them off . . .

  He looked to the west. The sun had slid down the wall of the sky far enough to nestle in the trees – and he watched as the fiery globe set them ablaze. The flames swayed, tangerine and hungry, reaching up past the smoking canopy to feed on the sky.

  And Geiger was coming. The angel-hawk, circling, each circuit tighter and closer than the last, his wings on fire . . .

  ‘Harry . . .’

  Matheson stared at the unmoving body. In the oversized smock, it was hard to tell if he was breathing, and the dimness of the light increased the degree of difficulty.

  ‘Harry!’

  Harry’s mottled head turned half a degree on his neck, and the meager effort brought a wince.

  ‘I’m not dead,’ he said, softly.

  They were on opposite sides of a fifteen-foot-square room, sitting on thin mattresses, their backs against the rough-hewn walls. Their right ankles were shackled with a steel clamp at the ends of heavy-gauge chains leading to large screw eyes set into the concrete floor. The chains’ six-foot length allowed the men access to their own portable toilets, but not the pair of square windows, which were boarded up on the outside with a four-inch opening in the center. Each man had a plastic gallon jug of water beside his mattress.

  ‘Drink some water, Harry.’

  The command made Harry swallow involuntarily. ‘Too hard to.’

  ‘Do it, Harry. You need to drink some water.’

  ‘No, David. I need to drink some bourbon . . . from a highball glass . . . while sitting in a chaise lounge . . . by an L-shaped pool . . . that Isabella Rossellini is swimming naked in.’

  ‘Isabella Rossellini. Is that right?’

  ‘Circa nineteen eighty-five. Without question.’ Harry picked up the jug with his right hand and brought it to his swollen lips, took a breath, and then got two gulps down.

  That they had, from the first night of captivity, effortlessly settled into a dry, sardonic banter was proof of a kinship that might, in normal circumstances, have taken months to show itself. Their fear was as much a bond as a bludgeon.

  Matheson brought his left hand up to his face. Three of the fingers were neatly wrapped in gauze, with a tint of pale red at the ends. They were clearly shorter than they had once been.

  ‘I can’t believe how little blood there was.’ His voice had a limp – a drag to the words that severe pain and drugs will bring, like a ball and chain.

  ‘How’s the pain?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Bad. Yours?’

  ‘Scintillating.’

  Matheson carefully lowered the hand back down. ‘What did Geiger do to him?’

  ‘Broke his jaw. Then all his fingers. Crushed them.’

  ‘Well, they work now.’

  Harry closed his eyes. The pain was having a field day – the stings on his face, the bruises on his chest and arms, the raw wounds on his palm – but holding the fear at bay was worse. He’d been negotiating with it for a while now – angling to get the best terms possible, trying to close the deal. Everything was on the table. Make me your best offer.

  He had spent all those years watching the session videos of Geiger at his black craft . . .

  ‘There are numerous applications of pain for specific scenarios . . .’

  . . . dutifully transcribing . . .

  ‘There is audio . . . there is pressure . . .’

  . . . doing his very best not to let his mind burrow into that of the Jones . . .

  ‘There is blunt force, manipulation of joints . . .’

  . . . not allowing himself to sit in that barber’s chair . . .

  ‘The application of intense heat and cold . . .’

  . . . but it occurred to him now – it was almost as if he’d been trained for it. Mayhem’s last move. The final joke. Your turn, Harry. Time to get in the chair. Au revoir.

  ‘Harry . . . Do you think Geiger is coming?’

  ‘I got out of the Geiger-guessing business. I was never very good at it.’

  They heard the doorknob turn and looked to the door as it opened – and Dalton stepped inside. He held two paper plates of food, with plastic forks and knives.

  ‘Good evening.’

  The prisoners stared back silently, and Dalton walked to a small black circle painted on the floor, put the plates down on the marker and took one step back. He’d measured it all out. They could reach the plates if they stretched out on their stomachs, but they couldn’t reach him.

  ‘Asparagus from the garden, and jambon from a nearby farm. I practiced on the pig with my scalpel, and then cured it myself. A wonderful word to say, isn’t it? Jam-bon.’ He smiled. It was genuine, with a faint curl at both ends. ‘A beautiful language. I’m sure you feel that way, Harry – your ex-wife being French.’

  Harry wanted to smile back, but it just wouldn’t come. ‘Question,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What do I want?’ Dalton cocked his head, as if he was unfamiliar with the word. ‘Yeah. What’s the end game?’

  ‘Ah.’ Dalton nodded. ‘You play chess.’

  ‘Used to.’

  ‘The end game. That’s a good choice, Harry.’ Dalton’s hand rose, and the finger went to tapping his lip. ‘End game. Two masters, face to face, with very few pieces left on the board. Wisdom, experience, cunning become key. Very nicely put.’ He straightened his glasses. ‘What I want – is an end to vengeance. An end to the feeling. You have no concept of what I’ve done to make that possible.’

  Harry gave him a deadpan nod. ‘Uh-huh. That’s very compelling, Dalton. Really – I’ve got goosebumps. But more importantly – think I can get a couple of Pepcids? My stomach’s a mess. I’m very gaseous. It’s really not fair to David here . . .’

  ‘Sorry, Harry. I try and stay away from all commercial remedies. Painkillers, antacids . . .’

  ‘You sound like Geiger.’

  Dalton grinned. ‘Do I? Harry . . . I take that as a great compliment.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Harry.

  Dalton’s tapping froze – and the hand slowly descended.

  ‘What happens to us if G
eiger decides to come, Dalton?’

  ‘Depending on certain variables, I will agree to a trade.’

  ‘For both of us . . . or one of us?’

  ‘Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Harry. It takes the fun out of things.’

  Dalton went to the door and opened it, allowing a glimpse of a hallway – bare wooden walls, a time-darkened wide-plank floor, a small table with an empty ceramic vase – and he turned back to them.

  ‘By the way . . .’ he said. ‘Geiger is in Paris. I expect him here sometime tomorrow. Bon appétit.’ He stepped out and the door closed.

  Matheson let out a breath. ‘Think he’s telling the truth – about Geiger?’

  ‘I have no idea. But if Geiger is on his way, then I think Dalton’s finished with us now. I don’t think he’ll be working on us anymore.’

  Matheson nodded. ‘I think you’re right. Of course, there’s a very good chance now that he’ll kill us . . .’

  ‘Definitely – but at least we don’t have to worry about torture.’

  ‘You’re a real glass-half-full kind of guy, Harry.’

  ‘Famous for it. And my timing, too. Exquisite, always.’ He took a slow breath, as deep as he could. ‘I picked a helluva start to my new career, huh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry. You’re here because of me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way – and it’s not true, either. The feeling that made me want to come . . . Haven’t felt like that in a very long time. Great feeling, man. And my dinner last night . . . ? My ex-wife. The love of my life.’

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘We haven’t spoken in a dozen years. It was a good thing to do. So . . .’

  They shared a look. Dalton had left something in the room. Like a gossamer, settling darkness. Matheson straightened himself up a bit. The chain made a bright jangle on the floor. He sighed, heavily, and the hollow depth of it was something Harry knew well. He’d heard it many times. The prelude to expiation.