While Zanni had a bite of cheese and either tore off a chunk of bread to go with it or took a chomp out of the apple, Victor was more ritualistic – slicing his brie and apple meticulously, just so, with a spring-loaded hunting knife, wielding the blade as if he’d been born with it in his hand.
Not once had they seen movement or proof of life inside a window.
Victor closed his knife, put the remainder of his baguette and cheese back in the tote and tossed the apple core away.
‘Geiger . . .’ he said. ‘Cheese, bread. You do not like these?’
‘I don’t eat things that have been cooked or processed.’
‘A smart man. Me . . . I cannot resist. You will live longer than most of us.’ Victor got to his feet. ‘Now, another vice – a cigarette – which Zanni does not allow close enough to be smelled.’
He strolled off farther into the trees.
Zanni’s head slowly turned, bright eyes like a lighthouse beam in a black night, watching Victor go. She had worked it out in her head – covered all the angles. That didn’t mean she was certain of every move she’d make, but right this moment that was not a burning concern – options would present themselves. She waited patiently until Victor faded into the dark – then turned back to Geiger.
‘Tell me exactly what Dewey told you. Fast.’
‘You called Victor and offered him the job – to back me up . . . and kill Dalton. But Victor was already working for Dalton – he and Dewey snatched Matheson and Harry. Victor tells Dalton about your offer . . . and Dalton says take it. We know from his video that Dalton was worried about one of Deep Red coming with me. Now, he’d know where you were every step of the way – walking right into your own execution. That is what Dewey told me.’
‘I don’t know, Geiger. All right – that’s what Dewey said. But what are the fucking odds of Victor working for Dalton the same time that I offer him a job? I mean – Christ . . .’
‘Why did you call Victor? Because you needed an experienced contractor who was fluent in French and English and knew his way around Paris.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Victor is the best in that category?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘All right. And who would Dalton be looking for at his end?’
Zanni did something with her lips that made them crimp at the ends. It looked childish to Geiger. It reminded him of Ezra.
‘An experienced contractor,’ she said, ‘fluent in French and English who knew his way around Paris.’
‘And the reason you’re trying to stop yourself from accepting what seems clear – is that you trusted Victor. It’s as much about your failing as his betrayal.’
Zanni’s eyes suddenly flared with tiny, shimmering violet flames. ‘Fuck you, Geiger. Save the psychoanalysis. I don’t need it.’
One of the two shining windows of the farmhouse went black. Zanni took in a long, slow breath – as if she were trying to stoke something inside her . . . or gathering strength to keep something inside from getting out. She pulled the zipper of her jacket down, slid a hand inside and took out a silver Beretta nine millimeter, then reached in a pocket for a coal-black silencer – and fitted it into the gun’s muzzle. Geiger took the last bite of his pear as he watched her start screwing the silencer in.
‘Why did you kill Dewey?’ she asked.
Geiger had spent years exploring the different approaches and deliveries of a question – because, in the end, that is what IR is about. That is the moment when things can crystallize – and the tone, engagement and timing might say as much about the asker as the question. Her voice had been cool and flat, but there was something animated and twisting below its surface – like an easy-going river whose hidden undercurrent could prove deadly to an unwary swimmer.
‘I didn’t kill Dewey,’ he said.
She looked up at him. Her hand made a final turn of the silencer.
‘I took him to an abandoned store. He was able to work free of his restraints. We fought. We stumbled around. A water tank fell on him – and crushed his chest.’
He watched her working her way through a maze of feelings and logistics. She had choices to make.
‘What are you going to do, Zanni?’
She raised the weapon and extended her arm into a firing position, then squinted to check that the silencer was in line with the barrel. The gun’s line of sight was an inch left of Geiger’s face.
‘What are you going to do?’
She lowered the gun and put it in her jacket pocket. ‘I’m going to ask Victor if it’s true.’
‘I’ll go with you.’
‘No you won’t. This isn’t about you, it’s about me – and I do my job just as well as you do yours.’ She got to her feet. ‘So you’ll stay the hell out of it.’
She looked hard as stone, and her anger was in the air around them like sudden heat. She zipped her jacket back up, turned, and walked into the woods.
Victor heard the footsteps crushing pine needles and turned, and blew a perfect smoke ring as he watched her approach. Zanni stopped fifteen feet away from him. The trees let a drizzle of moonlight in.
‘Did you ask him about Dewey?’ Victor said.
‘Dewey’s dead.’
Victor frowned. ‘I am sorry, Zanni.’
‘But before he died, he told Geiger something.’
‘What was that?’
‘He said that you were working for Dalton.’
Victor nodded mechanically at the news. ‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘I must confess – when Dewey went missing, I feared that might happen if Geiger had him.’ He took a long drag of his cigarette. ‘Take no offense, my dear – but your brother was not made for this work.’
He dropped his smoke, and very slowly ground it out with his heel. His thumbnail went to his cleft, up and down in consideration of the situation. He finally looked up at her.
‘So, Zanni . . . What are you going to do?’
Zanni’s hand came out of her pocket with the Beretta. She raised it.
Victor’s slow smile was proof he could still appreciate fate’s twisted sense of humor. He stared at the mouth of the silencer. There was not the slightest tremble in her grip. She was close enough that he could see her finger tighten on the trigger.
Geiger heard the faint, muffled ffffp of the shot – and got to his feet. He moved quickly toward the sound – and slowed to a stop when he saw her, thirty yards away, her back to him, standing over the motionless body as she fired again.
She put the gun in her pocket and headed back toward Geiger in a steady, unhurried stride. As she came even with him she met his gaze.
‘Let the animals have him,’ she said, and kept on walking. ‘I’m going back to the car. Getting cold.’
He sat at the kitchen table and slowly drew the blade of the antique scalpel back and forth across the hone, each stroke identical to the last. The ritual’s repetitious nature, coupled with the soft, rough murmur – swiff . . . swiff . . . swiff – was soothing. He sharpened the tool every day for half an hour, using a striped-gray Belgian coticule whetstone, timing the movements to the beat of his pulse.
And this was often the time when the madness arrived – his wizard accomplice stopping by for a visit, casting a spell – changing the field of lavender into a tribe of bloodthirsty serpents . . . turning the large whorls in the tabletop’s wood into plaintive faces, desperate souls trapped beneath the ice of a frozen lake . . . transforming the bottle of dishwashing detergent into a tiny nun, hands clasped at her waist, reciting her prayer in sweet, devout tones – I abandon myself into your hands, do with me what you will, I am ready for all . . .
Dalton remembered the two doctors entering his room in the clinic after the second surgery – faces stiff and lips pursed to mask the futility. They came and stood at his bedside like mourners at a wake – and he heard the unexpected undercurrent in Dr. Ling’s voice when he finally spoke. ‘There is something we wish to discuss with you. Something to consider . . .’
> He put the scalpel and whetstone down on the table, and raised his hands to his face. In so doing, his gaze caught a glimpse of something beyond them. He lowered his hands as his optical gears involuntarily refocused, and stared at the chair directly across from him, on the other side of the table. Its arms were human, its hands folded together on the table, fingers entwined, flexing calmly – and it had acquired a head atop its flat, lacquered pine back.
Geiger’s head. The unblinking slate eyes perused him.
As always, during the visions some straggling rational element of Dalton’s mind came along for the ride.
‘Not even here yet – and already back again?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ said the head.
Dalton sighed. ‘As the poet said – “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways . . .”’ He leaned back in his chair. The old wood squeaked. ‘And I don’t think it’s presumptuous to say I’ve done very well by you, Geiger.’
‘How so?’
‘Well . . . I envisioned a scenario with an effective dilemma for you – constructed it in such a way that you felt it accessible . . . that you could devise and invest in a strategy, and preparation . . . Am I wrong?’
‘No. But you didn’t really answer my question.’
‘It isn’t really your question. You’re just an hallucination. So it’s really my question.’ Dalton’s elastic grin stretched. ‘Why am I doing this? Because, thanks to you, I’ve become a disciple of suffering in a very new way – and I am going to blow your fucking mind.’
Geiger nodded. ‘I see.’
Dalton shook his head slowly. ‘No, you don’t. That’s the whole point.’
Geiger’s hands began cracking their knuckles, one by one, but after each pop! the deft, elegant fingers continued applying pressure – until the digits snapped at the base joints and hung loose, splayed, crooked – just as Dalton’s had when Geiger had finished with them last summer.
‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Dalton.
The hands collapsed into a tangled, wriggling heap of fingers on the table. Some decided to leave the pack and strike out on their own, and Dalton watched them inch-worm off in different directions. A few headed toward him, and he smiled like a patient shepherd.
‘That’s right. Good boys. Come to Poppa.’
Harry was on his knees on the mattress, the knotted cord in hand, practicing playing cowboy. His water jug was on the floor, six feet away – and he was flipping the looped end of the cord at it, trying to lasso it. He’d been keeping count. So far he was five for twenty.
Matheson was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, blinkless in thought.
Harry flicked another shot, and missed. He looked at his palms. They were each missing two circles of skin that Dalton had sliced out, and the tentative scabs had come off. They hurt. They burned.
‘I suck at this.’
‘We need blood.’
‘Huh?’
Matheson looked up. ‘To help sell it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Blood on the floor. So it’ll look real.’ He pulled up his smock and sleeves and stared at his limbs. ‘Where’s a good place to cut yourself to get blood – where you can stop it before losing too much?’
‘I once got a bad gash in my ankle – that really bled.’
‘How’d you stop it?’
‘Compression. Holding it up.’
Matheson ran a fingertip over the edges of the steel shackle around his ankle – and scowled.
‘Too smooth . . .’ He slid over to the edge of the mattress, bent his leg so the shackle rested on the floor, then took hold of it and started scraping it back and forth against the rough concrete. After a dozen strokes he stopped and felt the edge.
‘Is it getting sharp?’
‘It’ll get there,’ he said, and went back to work.
Zanni watched Geiger through the windshield. He was leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette. Neither of them had said a word on the walk back to the car, and once inside they’d sat silently for thirty minutes.
‘I’m going to have a smoke,’ he’d finally said, and stepped outside.
She couldn’t get a handle on him. There was something primal there – stripped down, with little want, without artifice, a closer cousin to an animal that belonged in the forest than a worldly man . . .
. . . and there was the Inquisitor – the steel-trap mind, the nerveless, sleek machine, cold prescriber of pain . . .
. . . and there was the man who chose to try and save her life . . .
Geiger was drifting in a sea of women – their scents, silken touch, the tug of secret knowledge. He closed his eyes. Their music was swirling in his head, the voices floating on the water in golden strands – sad ballads and lullabies and siren songs . . .
A rough, wet snort opened his eyes. Ten yards off to his right, a massive 300-pound wild boar was staring at him with milky eyes, its sharp tusks picking up the moonlight. Geiger straightened up – the animal took a step forward – and Geiger slowly headed for the car . . .
From where Zanni sat, clearly the beast was not satisfied with Geiger’s pace – because it suddenly charged at him. Geiger kicked into a sprint, reaching the car and swinging the passenger door open, and slipped inside and pulled the door closed a second before the boar rammed into it. The car shook.
‘Jesus . . .’ whispered Zanni.
They watched it through the window. It seemed unfazed by the impact, and not particularly angry.
‘Wild boar?’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s the ugliest animal I’ve ever seen.’
‘And much faster than I would have thought.’
She glanced at him. One might have expected a grin to accompany the remark, but not with Geiger.
They watched the boar start away with another snort – the tankish body moving slowly over the forest carpet, its large snout rooting for food.
Victor’s absence was as distinct as his presence had been. The last entry on his lengthy resumé of sins would be one of the classics, the fraternal trinity – greed, fed by arrogance, delivering betrayal. Carmine called it Zombie Poker, because once you’d made that particular bet the odds were you were already one of the living dead. Geiger thought of all those who had made the same play and ended up in his session rooms – and he wondered if wild boars ate dead, human flesh.
Zanni let her seatback down six inches. ‘I want to ask you something, Geiger,’ she said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’d planned on doing this solo. From the start, even back in Brooklyn – right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this morning, you were free and clear – but you called me . . . to bring me back in . . . even though you don’t trust me.’
‘I don’t remember saying I didn’t trust you.’
‘Even though you know my job is to kill Dalton . . . and to that end you and Harry and Matheson were expendable.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you brought me back into this why?’
‘It became clear to me that Victor would murder you, eventually,’ he said. ‘I actually saw an image in my mind of his killing you. With a knife.’
Zanni’s head did a twenty-degree tilt at him. It was one of the strangest things anyone had ever said to her. ‘I actually saw an image in my mind of his killing you . . .’
‘So you called to save me?’
It was a toneless question seeking information. A bank teller asking a customer what denomination of bills he would like. She had distilled the question like smooth Scotch. Whatever feelings she had about the subject were undetectable.
‘Zanni . . . Let’s just say – I know what works best for me.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry, Geiger. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me.’
She looked away, past her window. As the night stretched out, more wild voices were talking to it, and sets of golden eyes blinked.
‘Geiger . . . Why do you hardly ever blink?’
‘Remember I told you that I spent my nights in a small closet as a child?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never slept very much. I listened to music on a cassette player all night. It was pitch-black, and I got used to not knowing if my eyes were open or closed. It was all the same. I think that’s why.’
‘Why were you punished like that?’
‘It wasn’t punishment. I didn’t realize that until last night – when I had a dream. My father was trying to make me strong.’
I’m going to find a way to make you strong. Stronger than your mother. Stronger than me. So cry now, for the last time.
Geiger shifted in the seat. The sudden yanking open of the door had set his shoulder throbbing. It had been twelve hours since it had been iced.
‘And I have a question for you,’ he said.
‘Ask.’
‘The anger.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s there all the time?’
She turned to him. ‘Keeps me sharp, Geiger. In my job I can’t be the strongest, so I have to be the sharpest one in the room.’
She reached into the backseat, took something out of one of the grocery bags and put it in her lap. She opened the white paper wrapping and spread it back to reveal a three-inch-square piece of lustrous chocolate.
Geiger watched curiously as she broke off a chunk and put it in her mouth – but she didn’t chew. She just let it lie there inside her. Every ten seconds or so her cheeks would draw inward as she sucked on the treat, and then she would swallow.
The next step in the ritual was a nod in silent tribute to the pleasure – and then she began to chew what remained in her mouth.
‘Good,’ she murmured, and became aware of his stare. ‘Want some?’
‘I don’t eat chocolate.’
‘Does that mean you don’t like it?’
‘It means I’ve never tasted it.’
Zanni looked as if she’d just received news of a grievous crime. ‘Ever?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’
The Confessor Page 30