Box Nine

by Jack O'Connell

  He’s tried to make vague suggestions that might or might not change her. He’s mentioned news articles that prove the connection between loud music and hearing loss. He’s spoken of talk shows that detail the results of long periods of time without vacation. He’s mentioned casually the fact that he might switch to decaffeinated coffee. But he knows he’s probably just too close to the problem to be able to identify it. And Lenore’s response to all the seeming small talk is the same cutting sarcasm and annoyed interruption.

  Ike thinks back, pictures his mother. She’s like an opposite image of Lenore, cell for cell. Like Lenore was formed out of some negative mold of her mother, received all the counterqualities that Ike remembers in the woman. She was soft-spoken, contented, serene, endlessly compassionate, at times joyful, with a deep vein of humor and a love of the quiet. Now it’s as if someone stole her away, inverted all of those traits, and placed her back in his presence in the form of Lenore.

  But Lenore wasn’t always this way. That’s the thing. That’s the killer. He’s not deceiving himself. She was always tougher, capable of being more cutting, always a little quick, in motion. But it was a strength, and it was only part of the total package. She was also the funniest person Ike had ever met. No question. And way back it had seemed like, in her own way, she’d had her own well of mercy. And if she was always capable of violence, Ike thought it could be triggered only by an assault on the people she loved, that the two sides of her were absolutely connected, and rage could only be tapped by an aggression against himself or Ma or Dad. In first grade, when Dennis Lamont bloodied Ike’s nose at recess, Lenore waited for the end of the school day, then went after the kid with a vengeance. She blackened both his eyes and left lumps all over his head. Ike felt more than a little ashamed, but he both acknowledged and appreciated Lenore’s motivation. A Thomas had been harmed. Retribution was like a simple reflex. The next day she had noticeable contempt for the principal’s lack of understanding. It was one of the first of her many childhood disputes with authority.

  Although he can’t be certain about the chronology, Ike thinks it was a decade later that Lenore began to change. It was as if in entering puberty, some natural biological event kicked in, and Lenore’s tendency toward aggression took leave of its natural trigger. One day it was just not necessary for a family member to be affronted. Lenore’s hostility had a life of its own. But it seemed within the boundaries of normalcy until their parents died. From that point on Ike started to fear her a little. There was something about Lenore that was not there before. There was an irrational menace; an unhealthy predatory feeling surrounded her. When she came to his side of the duplex now, Ike expected her to be wearing a black hood and carrying a sickle.

  Ike despises the fact that she collects weapons. He’s sure it’s not something the other cops do. He’s aware that narcotics is one of the most dangerous jobs in the department. Especially lately. If he has to, he can understand the Magnum, rather than the standard-issue .38. But Lenore has something like an armory on the other side of Ike’s walls. It just isn’t necessary, and it’s a sign of something wrong. She also seems to love the weapons, to dwell on them inordinately, take them out and clean them incessantly. She keeps small cans of oil on her end tables the way other people keep candy dishes. Ike knows there are tubes of graphite and bristle reamers in the slots of her silverware drawer. She spends more time in the depths of the shooting bunker than most women her age spend at the latest downtown clubs. Ike thinks he’d be shocked if he just knew the percentage of her salary that went to bullets.

  What’s the thing with guns? Where did it come from? There was never a gun in the house where they grew up. Dad wasn’t a hunter, didn’t believe in it. If he was in front of the TV on the weekend and some hunting segment came on the sports program, he’d get up and turn to anything else. Bowling, cartoons, a cooking show, whatever. As long as he didn’t have to watch guys in forests up in Michigan or swamps down in Louisiana, big guys who spit phlegm a lot and kept their rifles broken open, hinge on the arm, barrels hanging limp to the ground until they spotted duck or deer or moose. Ike remembers his father saying they had “little brains and less heart.” Now the man’s daughter keeps things like an AK-47 and an Uzi in her bedroom closet. Something’s gone wrong in the family.

  What would Eva make of Lenore? They’re both professionals, very conscientious in their respective jobs, proud of their competence, confident in their abilities. Is that grounds for mutual admiration or competition? Would they recognize each other’s proficiency? Would they miraculously fall into this ardent conversation about slacking standards and the general decrease in the intelligence of the population? Or would a terrible hazard take over the room, Ike’s kitchen maybe, as they summed each other up and felt unconsciously threatened? Would insults be mouthed, slanders shouted, push degenerate into shove? And Ike has to admit that he’s interested enough to wonder, if the worst happened, who would win the war. Clearly, Lenore has the superior weaponry and the training to use it at maximum efficiency. But there’s something in Eva. He’d have to give Eva big points for control, more control than Lenore, a genuine coolness in the face of anything, a type of dispassionate reasoning you can’t learn, a fierce ability to calculate that has to come through the genes, through generation after generation of cold, often brutal logic, winning out over emotion, primal sentiment, and bloodlust. Ike suspects Eva’s got it. And realizing that makes him startled to think she’s hesitating, debating what to do about Rourke and the gang. Ike should be the one hesitating, weighing options, stalling for time. Eva should have it straight from the start. It’s one more thing that adds to this constant feeling of displacement, this general sense that rules are melting and order fading away.

  He’d like to stop, go home, spend the day in his bathroom throwing cold water in his face. But he knows this would be the worst thing he could do. When this feeling blankets him, the only solution is to find the most common, routine, instinctual activities and walk through them. And right now that would be to continue sorting, continue with the repetition, the hand-to-slot motion, the pattern of reading an address and filing a letter. What could be more mechanical than this? More rote and mindless?

  He hears the customer bell ring at the front counter. Has Eva opened the doors already? He checks the wall clock and sees that it’s after eight. The station is officially open. He puts his handful of letters back in their tray and walks to the counter, but there’s no one waiting. He looks beyond the waiting area, out the window to the parking lot, but there’s no sign of anyone. There’s only a small box wrapped in dull brown mailing paper and tied with twine. It’s about the size of an average donut box and he doesn’t want to touch it, doesn’t want to go anywhere near it. His stomach goes into a spastic knot and he wishes he could just radio for some official men in space suits, bomb squad guys with huge bulky gloves, boots twice the size of their feet, special metal boxes hooked up to obscure canisters full of disarming, defusing chemicals.

  But he can’t do anything like that. He has to reel in his panicking imagination and act normal. He has to approach the package, hold it in his hands, read the address off the front. He has to do this or admit to being well on his way to lost, out of touch, inconsistent with the majority’s view of reality.

  He steps up to the counter, puts a hand flat against either side of the package, turns it around. The smell starts to hit him. It’s not the same as the stink from the first package, but it’s just as bad in its own way, if not worse. He brings his head forward slightly until it’s hovering above the top of the package. He knows before he even reads:

  Box 9

  Sapir Street Station

  Quinsigamond

  He can’t well up any fluid in his mouth. It’s as if all saliva has evaporated in an instant. There’s an odd burning ache that flashes through his groin and then disappears. His ears start to throb as if he’s been out in a winter cold for hours without a hat. He can taste a disgusting, acidic bile in
the back of his throat. His breath becomes so labored, he thinks his lungs are in the process of a slow-motion collapse.

  He bites on his bottom lip, hard enough to break skin and draw a run of blood to the surface. And then he moves past all these horrible symptoms, these oppressions from his own body. He freezes them, steps out of them, wills them past perception, and reaches beneath the counter for the cool handle of the grey X-acto knife.

  He knows he should call for Eva and turn the box over to her, but something makes him push the edge of the blade into the package and before he can stop himself, he’s cutting. He goes to work on the twine like a surgeon at his peak, one slice and the string is limp on the counter. He runs the blade through the skin of the wrapping paper, finds a lip at the edge of the box, and slices Scotch tape. Then he sets the knife to the side and cautiously begins to lift the top off.

  Inside is stuffed with crumpled newspaper—some edition of The Spy. He removes all the newsprint and drops it to the floor near his feet. He comes to a single sheet of white typing paper. In calligraphied lettering, like some enlarged strip from a fortune cookie, it reads:

  You are a man in need of a warning

  Something moist is blotting the typing paper from underneath. Ike reaches in and lifts it by a corner, has to seemingly peel it away from the box’s contents. He lets the paper loose and it floats downward toward the small pool of crumpled newspaper.

  He looks in.

  In the first second, it’s hard to tell. It looks like a platter of those small cocktail hot dogs that are served as hors d’oeuvres, basted with a thick tomato sauce.

  And then the realization grabs him and there’s no mistaking the truth: they’re fingers. Human fingers. Dozens of severed human fingers bathed in the residue of their own shed blood. The nails, still attached, are black on maybe half of them. There are all sizes, adult and child, and types, pinky to index. There are no thumbs.

  Ike knows what should follow is a scream, a siege of vomiting, a faint. Instead, he’s hit with a violent trembling, instant Parkinson’s. It starts with his hands but shoots out to all extremities almost instantly. His head becomes a bobbing, brainless clown head.

  He steps back from the counter and lets his body do a slow fall backward until he finds himself in an awkward, still-vibrating, sitting position. An image takes over. A picture of his deceased parents, wrapped in the rags of their best clothes, looking like decaying movie zombies, pale blue mailbags draped over both their withered, bone-visible shoulders, pounding on his front door at the green duplex, driven to deliver something unknown.

  And then, thankfully, he blacks out.

  The new office park next to the old abandoned airport is a small ghost town. Rows of cookie-cutter office condos reveal white-washed windows as the headlights of Peirce’s Honda move across them. She expects to see plasticized sagebrush blow across the parking lot as she pulls up to the boxy guard shack where the rent-a-cop is watching the Celtics on a portable black-and-white TV.

  She shows her badge, and rather than leave the shack, the guard grabs the keys to the Synaboost office and tosses them to her.

  In five minutes she’s inside the lab and talking into the recorder.

  It’s quarter to nine at night, Victor. You’re saying, “Doesn’t this girl ever go home?” No, you’re not. You’re not thinking of me. You’re in the middle of a City Council meeting, hoping the cable TV cameras pick up your good side. Which side is that, boss? [Pause] Sorry, I’m just feeling a little tired. And I am about to head home. Once again I’ve pretty much come up with zero. Sorry, again. I’m sitting in a brand-new teal-blue leather swivel chair in the ridiculous offices of Synaboost Inc. up at the about-to-go-bust airport industrial park and ghost town. Flashed the badge and had one of the security guys let me in. Whatever happened to those old donut-eating, heavy-eyelid guys with beer bellies and walkie-talkies? Or was that just how they always showed security guards—night watchmen, right?—in the movies? I judge everything by the movies. Have you noticed that, Victor? This guy, this guard, he could have been a surfer out in Malibu. Probably about twenty-two with these magazine biceps just about ripping in two the gold insignia on his shirt sleeve. Am I making you jealous, Victor? I didn’t think so. The truth is, the guy had ordinary arms and I think he was stoned. [Pause] I guess I’m officially off duty, Mr. Mayor. I hope so, ’cause I’m sipping the Swarms’ B&B out of the Swanns’ Waterford crystal, listening to the Swanns’ Bang & Olufsen stereo. That new local talk-show guy is on, the one who thinks there’s someone hiding under everyone’s bed. Maybe he’s right, huh? Let me tell you, Victor, he has not had kind words for you. Words like puppet, tool, and pawn. He won’t come clean on who supposedly holds your strings, though. [Pause] Thought I’d take a swing by here before calling it a day. You should see this place, boss. Synaboost Inc. What kind of a name is that? Did they try to picture what it would look like in tiny print in the back of The Wall Street Journal? I don’t like it. I don’t know why. Did you take a look at the report on this place, Victor? Or better, did you see any photos? Good old Leo and Inez. Not exactly misers, you know what I’m saying? The office is sandwiched between two larger businesses. Steinmetz Neon Sign & Sculpture and Martinez Operations Research Inc. I think they’ve got the smallest square footage in the place. But they made up for it. There’s a reception area outfitted like they made the Fortune 500 last year. Then, behind that, a huge shared office for the loving couple. Get this, they used a partners desk—like one desk with both sides equipped for use. I’m guessing the teal chair, the one I’m swiveling in this very moment, belonged to Leo. Inez’s looks antique with this cream brocade back to it. Weird. They’ve each got a personal computer and they look brand-new. Oh, and I found a little private bar. Looks like the Swanns had a weakness for champagne and brandy. There are these little weird touches, like they made this attempt to put their own stamp on the place and it went all wrong. If you ask me anyway. There are these weird microscopes all over the place. All different sizes. They look like they’re antiques. Where the hell does someone buy antique microscopes? But they’re using them for decoration, I guess. Like sculpture, maybe. Okay, behind the office and running to the back of the building is the lab and it’s just what you’d think. Bright overhead fluorescent lights, long white worktables. Tons of beakers and test tubes and all this mad-scientist crap that I couldn’t put a name to in a million years. Plus a back wall full of technical books. The killer is that the place had been opened less than a month. What a waste. [Pause] Maybe you think I’m wasting time, Victor. I know this isn’t how you do things, but I always find that sooner or later, whether I’m cleaning out my refrigerator or setting up a sting in Bangkok, I’ve got to just stop and step back and look everything over. So, while you trade lame insults with Councilor Searle, I’ll sit here in Leo’s new chair and see what we’ve got. Okay, the brilliant and rich and beautiful Swann couple work long and hard on a new drug treatment for “language delayed” individuals. In the process, their shining personalities piss a lot of folks off and they bounce from a government operation in New Mexico to the Institute for Experimental Biochemistry to their own profit-motivated lab called Synaboost Inc. It looks like they made some break-throughs, but they’re so secretive and closemouthed about everything it’s hard to say. By accident one night, the Swanns are spotted swilling pasta with Mr. Mafia himself, Don Gennaro Pecci, sometimes local banker for those suffering from bad credit or some wild business-venture ideas. Next thing you know, the Swanns are found smacked in their Windsor Hills mansion in a style known to be employed by certain international drug cartels, i.e., their tongues are missing from their heads. And because of the tongueless corpses, the big shots like yourself and Lehmann throw a media blanket over the whole mess and call it a murder-suicide of the domestic violence variety. Meanwhile, a search of the crime scene finally reveals a weird little red pill in the shape of the letter Q and you call in a consultant to do a little unauthorized testing out at the Spooner resort for
our favorite sociopaths. We find out two things about the Q-drug, now called Lingo. First, the language skills of recipients shoot off the scale. To the point of no control. And second, all of the pleasure centers are massaged, you end up like a cat in heat, and there’s a major adrenaline rush. And third, if you pop too much, there’s the little side effect of absolute, homicidal rage. So we’re left with a pretty huge problem—the possibility that the Swarms were able to set up production before the cat got their tongue. Sorry, must be the B&B. Now, the Fed report I read says that the lab here was wiped clean. No trace of anything. Not even a stray Swann fingerprint. To me, that says some work was done in here that no one wants us to see. But I’m a pessimist at heart. Look at the men I date, she said. I can’t help it, Victor. You didn’t know what a weapon this little Panasonic would be when you gave it to me. Better be more careful when you pick out my Christmas gift, you know? Let’s say Leo and Inez cooked up a couple of batches of Lingo before they got smacked. It follows that whoever’s holding the stuff wiped out the whiz kids. Big-M time. Motive. [Pause] I say business partner of some kind. Silent or otherwise. The most visible suspect, again, is the Pecci family as financial backers of a new product with big Bangkok market potential. But I vote “no.” Here’s the thing: We know the big immigrant wave has grabbed massive chunks of Pecci’s Bangkok power over the past five years. And Pecci has pretty much let it go. He’s got a nice, long-standing arrangement with the city fathers, no offense, boss, and Bangkok is more of a sewer every week. Pecci is ready to turn the whole place over to the Jamaicans and Cambodians and every other refugee party off the boat. He’s diversifying into real estate, buying up hotels and waiting for the day the Commonwealth legalizes gambling. I say thumbs down to Pecci. That leaves a clean slate for investors. Okay, we have to consider Mr. Bangkok himself. Mr. Colombia. Cortez. It’s a possibility, but he’s normally a retailer, a distributor. Could be branching out, stretching his arms farther up and down the ladder. Let’s leave him a possibility. Could be there’s a new player in town, someone who saw this as a perfect way to make a name, really explode on the scene, get a rep. I’ve spent a little time on the new Narc-Linc base we’ve bought into for the department computer. I can imagine what I’ll have to do for that little appropriation. Anyway, there’s sort of this after-hours electronic bulletin board that narc squads around the country use casually, sort of a hobby thing. You input tips and street talk and narc gossip, stuff like that. Lately, I’ve punched up rumors about a Honduran named Arnello who was coming in to test the water. But remember, information like that is never very reliable. There was also talk about a Cuban hotshot headed north named, I think, Fante. And there was a trio of Hawaiians, all brothers supposedly, sweeping east with some impressive display cases, but, again, supposedly, they’re strictly icemen. I could go on for weeks with this kind of thing and we wouldn’t get very far. Now, if you want to look at the problem in terms of the Swarms’ connections, rather than the product’s likely connections, you hit a brick wall almost immediately. No family, no friends. No one but each other. There were people at the Institute, names like Blonsky and Iser and Daleski. Older men and women. Seems like a real long shot. Then there’s Woo, the consultant. More likely, but still … [Pause] Then, of course, we have to turn the tables on ourselves and take at least one hard look. This is a rule of mine. In the middle of a case, turn a hundred and eighty degrees and see what’s there. Question, Victor: Is it possible that the missing tongues and the Lingo-in-the-garlic-salt are just ways of focusing our attention in the wrong direction? [Pause] No, I didn’t think so either. I’m almost out of possibilities. Except for the unspoken one. The most unpleasant one of all. [Pause] Why do I have this recorder, Victor? Huh? What’s the real deal with the tape recorder? With my little investigation within the investigation? What is it you know or think you know that you won’t tell your mistress? I hate that word, Victor. Mayor Welby. Sir. I hate the fucking word mistress. Let’s say instead—the narc you’re screwing behind Mrs. Mayor’s back. [Pause] I’m a problem to you, Vic, old friend. And the sad part is, I wouldn’t have to be. But it’s situations like this that just start me thinking and then the more I think, the more pissed off I get. ’Cause if I’m worthy enough to sleep with, Victor, then I’m worthy enough to share your miserable suspicions with. [Yelling] Especially when they concern my goddamn department. [Long pause] You’ve got information I don’t, right, Victor? And you want to add to your information through my efforts. Without sharing what you’ve already got. With me. Without talking to me. [Pause] You think someone’s dirty. And by that I mean over the top. I mean filthy. I mean more than an occasional look-the-other-way. I hope you’ve got something hard to back up your suspicions. [Pause] Okay, let’s give it a rundown. I’ll eliminate myself, since even if you think I’m a suspect, I know otherwise. Unless I’m a multiple-personality case. And if that’s true, I want to know, do you date us all? Do any of us know about each other? [Pause] Might as well finish off poor Leo’s bottle. Don’t worry, it was almost empty to begin with. Let’s see, now, who can we smear tonight? I think I’ll kick free Detective Shaw. She’s the new kid on the block. Not that that gives her clearance, but she’s still learning the alphabet, you know. I don’t think she’d know who to extort from yet, or on what days of the week. Richmond is a more likely choice. But where’s his motivation? I mean, sorry, but I don’t think this guy’s ambitious enough to work both sides of the street. He’s an old bachelor waiting on his pension and not exactly a scholar, if you follow me. Lieutenant Miskewitz? Interesting. I’ve never quite known how to read the guy. He’s never made himself clear to me. Is he brass or still a street cop at heart? Depends on what time of the day you talk to him. He’s changeable. I’ve always felt he was in over his head, got a few promotions he didn’t really expect and feels uneasy about it. But the big point is, if Miskewitz is in on anything, it’s got to be with a lot of help. He’s an office man. He’s only down in Bangkok when The Spy is shooting a cover photo. A lot like you, Mayor Welby. So if Miskewitz is involved he’s got a partner. Then there’s Zarelli and, believe me, it’s a distinct possibility. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. This guy could justify anything. “What, the Nazis? A little loud, a little flashy, but not bad guys at heart”—that’s Zarelli. I’ve got no facts here, but I know the guy’s heart. And I’m pretty sure it can be bought. And that brings us to Detective Thomas. Lenore. The woman who showed me the ropes. [Pause] Lenore is unique. I don’t know what to say about Lenore. The words don’t come. She’s complicated. I don’t know anyone like her. The thing is, she’s been down in the Park for a long time. She’s made friends. She’s got her nails deep into some informants. One problem is that the Park’s a different world. Everything’s painted even subtler shades of gray than the outside. All the words and numbers take on different meanings. I think it’s very easy to get confused. At least it would be for me. I just don’t know about Lenore. It’s almost impossible to read her. I’ve never felt close to her, for all the time we’ve spent together. I don’t think anyone has. Richmond tried to tell me he thought something was up between her and Zarelli, but that’s more than ridiculous. Lenore would eat a guy like Zarelli for a midday snack. She’d break him in two. She’d leave him shaking in the men’s room. The thing is, you could give this quick portrait of her, okay? You could use words like isolated and precise and cold and willful. You could go on. But that’s absolutely surface. And I don’t know what’s underneath. I’ve always thought of Lenore as one of these people who end up doing something shocking with their lives. Something unbelievably good or bad. Like they disappear into Calcutta one day to care for lepers. Or they walk into a Burger Bonanza and wipe out everyone inside with an Uzi. Then afterward, the reporters go to all the neighbors and friends and they say, “I just don’t know, she was very quiet, I had no idea.” I think that everything Lenore Thomas is, she carries around inside herself. Sealed. Impregnable. So does that mean she could be filthy or not? [Pause] I don’t know.
You tell me. Victor. [Pause] I think it’s time to go home.