The Confessor

by Mark Allen Smith

  ‘Can we talk about how you see this thing?’ she said. ‘What you’ve been thinking about?’

  ‘I need to sleep for a little while first. Twenty minutes.’

  Geiger settled back and closed his eyes. Zanni frowned, put on her sunglasses, then spun off a perfect reverse-to-drive maneuver and headed for the highway.

  He could smell her lavender scent.

  He hadn’t been sleeping, nor had he needed to. He’d wanted to take himself out of the three-way for a time and have a chance to hear the tone of simple back-and-forth between Zanni and Victor – but there had been few exchanges. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Did you look at the satellite shot?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Victor. ‘No other houses nearby. A good thing.’

  They were on a two-lane road, going through a tiny village – a small café, a boulangerie, a single narrow street to turn on lined with a dozen two-story, faded pastel houses – and they were past it in less than a minute.

  ‘Here are my thoughts,’ said Geiger. ‘We drive up the hill toward the house, pull off out of sight, leave the car and go on foot to a higher vantage point. We watch the house, see if anyone comes in or out, perhaps we can see movement inside.’

  Up ahead, arching plane trees on each side made a tunnel of the road – their branches curled over the road and clasped above it.

  ‘Then, I see two choices. I walk in alone – and at some point, you move in. Or – we go in together. We don’t know the interior layout . . . so we don’t go in at night – we wait until first light tomorrow. Either way – the reason I’m here is Harry and Matheson. I know your job is to take Dalton out – but my only concern is keeping them alive.’ His hand went to his jaw, to scratch at his beard, and he realized it was no longer there. ‘Your thoughts.’

  He and Zanni found each other via the rearview mirror – their faces frames with blank canvasses.

  ‘If you go in alone – you’re putting whatever plans he has for you in motion. Maybe he wants to swap war stories over a bottle of wine, maybe he wants to see how much sushi he can make out of you. I don’t know, Geiger. If we go in together – the benefits are textbook. More interior coverage in less time – more discovery in less time – if he has guards in there, more decisions for them to make, more stress . . .’

  They came out of the cave of trees and quilts of farmland stretched away on both sides, hues of a painter’s palette – tan and light and darker greens, spotted with trees, solitary exclamation points of cypresses, clusters of umbrella pines and sycamores, white-flowered almonds, huddled groves of olive trees. Geiger had a flash of the house in Brooklyn, filled with his creations and the rich scent of woods and oil. They were already orphans. Who would be the one to adopt them?

  ‘Key point, Geiger: Is Dalton going to let them go if you show up alone? My feeling is no – but it wouldn’t shock me if he did, either. He’s that crazy. If you believe he’s going to make the trade, then maybe you should go in alone . . . and we’ll bide our time. But – I think we should go in together.’

  Geiger nodded. ‘Victor . . . Your thoughts.’

  ‘I agree with Zanni.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  Victor turned round to face Geiger.

  ‘Do you gamble, Geiger? Play cards?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There is a saying – in English it would be “the dealer gets to cheat first”.’ The crimps at the ends of Victor’s pale smile were like battle scars, testaments to time served. ‘So, like Zanni, I should rather act than react. Always.’

  He turned back around in his seat. Zanni glanced at him. ‘The dealer gets to cheat first. I like that, Victor,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said.

  Geiger watched her profile grin very faintly. She didn’t have doubts about Victor. She would be surprised to find herself dying by his hand – if she had a moment to consider that fact before she did.

  They came into Tulette on Avenue de Provence and slowed at the small town center, where a Roman-numeraled clock stood on a ten-foot wrought-iron post. Place du Cheval Blanc was two parallel, one-way streets with a stretch of parking between them, flanked on both sides by rows of bare-branched, knobby-trunked trees. A dozen two-story buildings of old mortar and stone ran the length of each street, most with pastel shutters, some with narrow wrought-iron balconies, their ground levels housing shops – a brightly colored épicerie, a gift shop, a pâtisserie, a boucherie with an impressive window display of fresh crimson and brick-red meats. In the center was a fountain surrounding a statue of Ceres, the goddess of crops and fertility, who had only a few people to watch over from atop her six-foot pedestal.

  Zanni pulled into a space in front of Café du Cours. Its green-awninged sidewalk terrace had eight small tables and chairs. One of them was occupied by two men in thick, high-collared sweaters reading sections of a shared newspaper, their cold espresso and idly burning cigarettes forgotten before them.

  ‘Geiger,’ said Zanni, ‘what do you want if you get hungry?’

  ‘Fruit, vegetables. Raw. But not very much.’

  ‘Victor . . . A baguette and cheese for me. And water for all of us.’

  Victor reached for his door. ‘Café?’

  ‘No,’ said Zanni.

  ‘Yes,’ said Geiger. ‘Black. No sugar.’

  ‘And Victor . . .’ said Zanni. ‘Chocolate. With nuts if there is.’

  ‘This, I already know,’ he said.

  He got out and walked toward the épicerie. Geiger’s gaze followed him all the way to the shop’s front door and inside.

  ‘Zanni . . . There isn’t a lot of time. Look at me.’

  A dark presence had moved into Geiger’s voice – and it made Zanni turn completely around in her seat. She took off her sunglasses.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Victor works for Dalton.’

  One of Zanni’s brows rose, arching into a question mark above the bright violet eyes. Sharpshooter’s eyes.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Geiger?’

  ‘The man you had tailing me told me. Dewey.’

  The pictures came crashing into Zanni’s mind like waves over the top of a storm wall. Her brother strapped into some kind of chair . . . Geiger holding something utile and blunt . . . his queries delivered in the silkiest, most even tones . . . No-Can-Dewey trying to hold his own with bravado against a force he could in no way appreciate.

  ‘And you’re sure he was telling the truth?’

  ‘I’m right about these things.’ From another’s lips there might have been a ring of arrogance, or a ripple of false modesty with a faint smile, but it was prototypical Geiger. ‘Concentrate, Zanni. Why would I make this up? What purpose would it serve me?’

  Zanni shook her head. ‘But I know Victor. We’ve worked—’

  ‘Listen very carefully. I’m going to play something back for you. You came to pick me up at the turn-off near the station. When I handed Victor the directions he started to read them . . . and I asked – ‘Have you ever been there?’ – and he answered, “Tulette? No.” Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I never said Tulette. I just said, “Have you been there?”’

  ‘Christ, Geiger . . . He was reading the damn directions.’

  ‘Yes, he was – but there is no mention of Tulette in them.’

  That awful feeling started to grab at her. She used to get it when she was racing, when she had the lead, set in her stride, top speed – and she sensed someone coming up, closing the gap, and she’d think to herself – I’m in my groove . . . I’m flying . . . I put it all together just right – so how can this be happening? She wondered if Geiger could see it in her face.

  ‘Look at the directions, Zanni. There are route numbers and, I assume, places to turn – but the name of the town – Tulette – isn’t there. Go ahead. And hurry.’

  Zanni reached up to the passenger seat’s visor and pulled the paper out, and searched the lines for the name – ho
ping he was wrong . . . but already knowing he wasn’t.

  ‘It was a natural slip on his part, Zanni. He’s known where we were going from the start.’ He glanced out the window. ‘You’ve been set up.’ The épicerie’s door opened and Victor came out with two bags. ‘Put it back. He’s coming.’

  Zanni slid the paper back in the visor. ‘How did you know we were coming to Tulette?’

  ‘Dewey told me. He was working for Dalton, too.’

  The past tense – ‘was working’ – made Zanni’s pulse twitch.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you—?’

  The opening of the door shut her lips. Victor got in, put the larger bag on the floor between his legs, and took two coffees from the smaller bag and offered one to Geiger.

  ‘Black. No sugar.’

  Zanni watched Geiger take the paper cup. Both men pulled their lids off and took sips. There were too many things to focus on, too many feelings to tamp down, and her heart felt twice its size, cramped inside her chest with little room to beat. She pulled back inside herself – something one of her instructors had taught her years ago. He called it ‘circling the wagons’ – a way to dial everything down for just a second or two, if you needed to catch your emotional breath . . .

  Victor was talking to her now, lips moving, but she hadn’t heard what he’d said.

  ‘. . . with hazelnuts,’ he finished, and cocked his head at her. ‘Zanni . . . ?’

  ‘. . . What?’

  ‘The chocolate. It has hazelnuts in it.’

  She nodded. ‘I like them.’ She glanced at Geiger, and he raised his eyes from the steam of his coffee to look back at her. ‘Time to go,’ she said, put on her sunglasses, and slowly pulled out into the street.

  Victor could feel Geiger’s stare on him like a tap on his shoulder. He turned to meet the gray, unblinking eyes for a moment, and then settled back in his seat. In the time it had taken to do his shopping, some new element had shown itself and left behind traces. He could sense it.

  He took the directions out from the visor. ‘Everything is good?’

  ‘Everything’s good,’ said Zanni, and got back onto Avenue du Provence, heading away from the town center.

  Victor took another sip of coffee and let it linger in his mouth before he swallowed. He was near-certain of one thing. Everything was not good.

  They were pulled over on the side of the road, one hundred yards from Route 51. Across the intersection, the dusty, narrow way turned to gravel and started a steep climb. The higher the road went, the thicker the forest on the east side grew.

  Victor looked up from the directions in his hand and pointed. ‘We go across, and up the hill and stay right, and the house is at the very top.’

  Zanni was looking down at the iPad in her lap – at a satellite image of the area and its solitary rectangular house – bordered on one side by woods and three sides by vineyard fields, their rows of vines stretching out in long, even lines. Superimposed on the shot was a digital grid with numbers at each junction of its bright blue lines. The absoluteness of it was helping to fence in her thoughts, as they turned more wild.

  ‘The house is seventy-six feet long, twenty-two feet wide,’ she said. ‘There’s a break in the forest a hundred yards up the road – we’ll pull in there as far as we can and walk the rest of the way up through the woods. The closest point from the treeline to the house is sixty-one yards.’

  Geiger was listening – but he was thinking about killing, the specific act of it. From the start he’d made the decision to keep the subject tucked away and unconsidered until the relevant moment, and now it was time to bring it out and explore the possibilities – the timing, logistics, and the repercussions. The situation had become mathematical in its purity, as logical as a geometric equation – and whether or not Zanni believed what he had told her was not part of it. Victor had to die, and Geiger would arrive at the answers to how and when by slipping inside Victor’s mind.

  Victor’s true function would be moving into the foreground very soon, an actor taking center-stage for his big scene – delivering Geiger safe and sound . . . and disposing of Zanni. Dewey’s absence would add to his load and pump up his stress – certainly, Victor had been reworking how things would play out since Dewey disappeared – but that wouldn’t slow him down. Geiger knew the man. He had met Victor many times over the last dozen years, in cities all over the world. The trackers, the finders, the snatchers of Joneses, delivering and then retrieving them – and sometimes the last faces a Jones ever saw. Victor was the kind of man who, on occasion, killed people as part of his job . . . and slept soundly in his bed, perhaps waking after a pleasant dream. They went about the business with different techniques, in different shades of darkness, but they were alike in a particular way – they were all missing the one, same cluster of neurons in their brains that produced the singular spark of compassion, and the sense of kinship with their own species. Maybe it had been burned or beaten or cut out of them – with a hot iron, or a fist, or a razor. Maybe they had been born without it. But the lack of it made them very good at what they did.

  And Geiger knew this because he had been a close cousin to them all for much of his life.

  Zanni hit the gas. There were no cars coming either way, and she drove across the intersection and reached the road. The gravel started chattering loudly beneath the tires and she shifted down, and they slowly began the ascent.

  29

  They had pulled off the gravel road onto the dirt path into the woods and been able to drive in fifty yards deep before the tall, lean Scots pines became more crowded and barred their way.

  Now Geiger and Zanni stood staring at each other across opposite sides of the hood while Victor, at the open trunk, took items from two cases and put them in a black canvas tote. Geiger had been allotting half his thoughts to what Victor was thinking. With no word from Dewey for so long, the man likely assumed he was no longer alive, and that there was a good chance Geiger was the cause of death. So Victor’s main concern would be – what, if anything, did Dewey confess before he died? What did Geiger know? And the supreme irony that had to have occurred to the Frenchman – if Geiger tried to take him out, Victor could not respond with equal intent. His job was to bring Geiger in alive, unharmed.

  Victor picked up the tote and closed the trunk. ‘Ready.’ Zanni pressed the key in her hand, the car locks clicked shut, and without a word she headed up the hill. The two men followed after her, a very soft crunch to their steps on the carpet of needles underfoot. A few voices took turns trilling from up in the high branches – sweet, short bunches of notes. Geiger looked up. The sound reminded him of something, but he couldn’t nail down what it was . . .

  Zanni glanced back. ‘We go to the highest vantage point first and see what that angle gives us . . .’

  . . . and then Geiger knew. The tiny bells at Christine’s patio – and his memory swerved to the bedroom. Christine lying asleep and warm beside him, her hand in his, as if one lonely piece of her had found a place where it belonged . . .

  ‘. . . then we make our way back down to the closest point at the treeline.’

  . . . while his mother came alive within him – and with her resurrection the knowledge that he had been cherished . . .

  ‘If we find we have a kill-shot somewhere, at least we know we have that option.’

  . . . and that his simple presence had given another joy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Victor. ‘That would be good to know.’

  Zanni stared at Geiger, waiting for a response. ‘How do you feel about a kill-shot, Geiger, if the opportunity presents itself?’

  ‘As you said – it would be an option.’

  They were like identical twins who speak to each other in their own secret language. And they weren’t talking about Dalton.

  Zanni nodded, and the trio continued up the slope, weaving through the pines. Geiger heard a muted grunt come out of Victor. His knees didn’t like th
e climb.

  ‘Scuze me. Sorry,’ said the man in the gray suit as he pressed up against Ezra. The subway had already been crowded when Ezra and his mother got on at Eighty-sixth Street, and now the Forty-second Street horde was pushing in the car, not to be denied a ride no matter how slim the space or the odds.

  ‘You okay?’ asked his mother.

  Ezra’s dark scowl met her. ‘Yes, Mom. I’m okay.’ His expression had set in before they’d left the apartment and had become a permanent fixture on his face.

  ‘You can lose the scowl, y’know,’ she said. ‘You made your point.’

  ‘This is a bad idea. A really bad idea.’

  ‘Ez . . .’

  He shook his head wisely. ‘Mom . . . Going to talk to these people. Giving them information. Telling them stuff they may not know. Yeah – maybe they can help. Or maybe they come after all of us . . .’

  ‘You don’t necessarily know the right answer to this.’

  ‘Maybe not – but Geiger does, and if he thought it was a good idea he would have gotten in touch with them.’

  ‘Geiger is always right?’

  ‘As a matter of fact – yeah, he is. He always knows what to do.’

  The train started up again with a sudden jolt, and the mass of bodies swayed a few inches – but there was no reason to worry about losing one’s balance.

  ‘Ezra . . . I can’t just leave this to a man I’ve never met – not if it’s about your father’s safety. And Harry’s too. There are people who know how to deal with this.’

  ‘Yes, they do – but that’s the point, Mom. We don’t know if they’re gonna be the good guys or the bad guys. We could end up helping guys like Hall find them . . .’ He tried to scrunch around a few degrees, but couldn’t. ‘And the good guys wanna put Dad in prison anyway.’ He knew it was a lame comment, but he was running out of ways to try and dissuade her.

  ‘I can’t not do anything,’ she said. ‘And if it’s a choice between your father going to prison or dying, then I’ll take that chance.’

  ‘Well, since when do you care what happens to Dad?’