The Inquisitor: A Novel

by Smith, Mark Allen

  His distance vision was normal but his short-range focus was still interrupted by small, sporadic blips, so even though the drizzle had become a steady rain, he changed the wipers’ setting from high to intermittent after a dozen blocks because their continual sweep exacerbated the anomaly. Raindrops bled down the windshield, stained with the colors of traffic lights. He went blocks at a time without seeing a soul.

  As the light turned yellow at Sixtieth Street, Geiger slowed to a stop and turned around. The boy lay facing the seatback, shoulders rising and falling faintly.

  “Be there soon,” Geiger said.

  The boy’s head moved slightly on the seat in a horizontal nod, and Geiger turned back to the wheel. He could feel his pulse echoing through his veins—not faster, but with a weighty beat instead of its usual ping. He knew that he needed to be away from the movement and sound of the world. He needed the darkness and the music to usher him back to a starting place. His life was all balance, calibration, detail. He needed to reset his internal scale.

  When the light turned green he hit the gas and then saw the wet blur of a bicyclist speeding into the intersection. Geiger swerved right but heard the car’s front bumper clip the back wheel of the bicycle, followed by the tinny scraping of metal skidding across asphalt. He pounded the brakes, sending the boy thudding to the floor in back.

  The rider had come to a stop against a parked car, pinned beneath his mangled ten-speed. He wasn’t moving. Geiger turned around to check on the boy: he was wedged down sideways against the backs of the front seats, grunting through the tape across his mouth.

  Geiger reached down and pulled him up onto the backseat. “You okay?”

  A loud crack swiveled Geiger’s head to the driver’s window. Outside, the bicyclist stood with a tire pump held high beside his head in a tight fist. In the misty light of the streetlamps, it was impossible to tell whether the dark patches on his glowering face were blood or grime.

  “Get out of the car, motherfucker!” the rider yelled through the window.

  He was tall and chiseled, ropy muscles stretching out of his T-shirt and spandex riding shorts. Both upper arms were emblazoned with tattoos of barbed helixes. After trying the door handle and discovering that it was locked, he hammered the window again with the pump. A nickel-sized spider’s web bloomed in the glass.

  “Get the fuck out here!”

  Geiger’s ears were ringing. The inside of his skull felt crowded, as if his brain had grown too big for its casing. His eyes danced forward, taking in the views of the windshield and rearview mirror at the same time. Headlights in the rain cruised toward him.

  “Are you coming out of that car or am I coming in?”

  Geiger turned back to the bicyclist, and there, just outside the window, was a man in overalls. His wide, flat forehead shone with sweat; in his hand he held something thin and shiny. For half a heartbeat, his father stood before him. Then he was gone.

  The tire pump came down on the window again, and the glass burst into a thousand tiny diamonds. The rider reached in and grabbed hold of Geiger’s jumpsuit.

  “Get out here, asshole!”

  Geiger’s right hand shot out the window frame, anchored itself in the bicyclist’s hair, and pulled him halfway into the front seat. Growling in anger, the man tried to bring his arms through the opening to wage some form of attack, but the fingertips of Geiger’s left hand dug into the soft cavity above the man’s clavicle. The growls turned to screams.

  Geiger pulled the man nose to nose. His fingers relaxed and the screaming stopped.

  “Go—away—now,” Geiger said.

  The man stared at him wide-eyed, breathless, raindrops beaded on his face.

  “Do you understand?” Geiger asked.

  The man nodded. Geiger let go and the rider wriggled his way out the window, stumbling back onto the street, hands going up to his neck.

  Geiger’s foot found the gas pedal and he drove off, keeping the point of the speedometer’s arrow exactly between 30 and 40.

  * * *

  Geiger’s block was quiet. Nothing moved except for rainwater in the gutters. There were few residential units on the street, and the uniform shop and bodega didn’t open until six, the auto body shop and storage warehouse an hour later. Geiger’s building was between a bath and shower supply outlet and an empty storefront. Constructed of tawny bricks, it was twenty feet wide, thirty feet deep, and two stories high. Its windows were boarded up and had been for a long time.

  Years ago, the place had belonged to a Serb with whom Geiger had worked in renovation. When jobs were scarce, the Serb would offer Chinese food to friends and coworkers in exchange for their help in gutting the place, and before Geiger went into his current line of work he’d spent a dozen nights ripping out rotted walls and flooring. Five years later, he had gone back. Boards covered the windows, and the dumpster in the alley was filled with drywall so moldy that it obviously hadn’t been emptied in months. But the Serb still lived there; he invited Geiger in and told him that he’d run out of money and the dream had died. That same afternoon, Geiger and the Serb worked out a deal, and two days later Geiger paid him in cash. He had had two-thirds of the price in hand and borrowed the rest from Carmine on friendly terms.

  Geiger had done all the work on the place himself. He insulated the second floor and closed it off, upgraded the plumbing and wiring, and fenced in the small backyard. Before putting up drywall, he built a floor-to-ceiling layer of cinder blocks across all the walls and then fit every fourth block with a mixture of nitroglycerine and RDX in shaped charges that would detonate inward. He painted the walls with a soft gray he found at Sherwin-Williams called Tradewind.

  Then he began creating the floor.

  He had carried the design around in his head for years. Three or four days a week he made the rounds of reno sites in Brooklyn and Harlem—brownstones, small buildings, factories—searching for and buying discarded antique flooring. Sometimes he might come back with a six-foot plank of chestnut, other times a few eight-inch squares of hemlock. Employees at lumber and reclamation companies in the boroughs came to expect his biweekly visits as he sought out the more esoteric kinds of wood he needed.

  Whatever the type of wood, whatever its shape or state, the process was always the same. Geiger would saw, shave, and whittle—as much by instinct as finite measure—to create the shape of the piece he saw in his head. Three lengthy sanding sessions with increasingly fine paper would take the wood down to its original, natural surface. Then, after treating all sides of the piece with a homemade concoction of beeswax and china wood oil, he would set it into the whole. One after another, the scraps became part of a huge, six-hundred-square-foot jigsaw puzzle.

  He started from the outer borders and worked inward. He used more than seven hundred pieces, some as long as five feet and as wide as four inches, some no bigger than a bottle cap. The wood was teak, Brazilian tigerwood, oak, mahogany, ash, hemlock, elm, chestnut, heart pine. It took Geiger seven months to complete the fantastic mosaic, a creation a visitor would have marveled at had any seen it. In fact, the boy would be the first ever to set foot inside the place.

  Geiger pulled up and parked twenty feet from his door. He looked into the rearview mirror and studied himself. He could feel his brow starting to tighten; from the far horizon of his mind, a storm had begun to move in.

  He turned around and spoke to the boy, who was still stretched out on the seat.

  “We’re going inside now. Twenty feet on the sidewalk, then three steps up, and then we’ll be in.”

  He got out, opened the back door, and reached in. He took one of the boy’s cuffed hands and pulled him up into a sitting position.

  “Ready?”

  The masked head gave a tired nod; the boy could hardly hold his chin up. The tape across his mouth had a horizontal, inward crease where his mouth had reflexively tried to suck in air for hours. Geiger grabbed the violin case and glanced up and down the block. There was no one in sight.

/>   “We’re going to walk fast now. Watch your head.”

  He kept hold of the boy’s hand as he slid across the seat to the door. When he swung his legs out, Geiger pulled him up and the boy immediately turned his blinded face up to the rain as if seeking some form of purification.

  “Let’s go,” Geiger said.

  He linked his arm inside one of the boy’s and ushered him toward the house. “Three steps,” he said, and they went up without incident to the front door, which, exactly like the one at Ludlow Street, was made of heavy-gauge steel and had no external locks or knobs. On the wall beside the door was a keypad; Geiger punched in the code and a soft chirp preceded a louder click of disengaging chambers. After the door opened inward an inch or two, he pushed it open all the way and steered the boy inside. The door closed behind them, the locks clacking as they automatically reengaged.

  Geiger knew that his actions had set something seismic in motion and that his place in the universe was somehow being redefined. But for a moment the silence was a palliative, a welcoming home. He put down the violin case, took a Swiss Army knife from a pocket, and cut the ties at the boy’s wrists.

  “I’m going to take the tape off now,” he said.

  Geiger tried, with thumb and forefinger, to get hold of a corner of the tape beneath the boy’s left ear lobe. Humidity and sweat had saturated the tape and emulsified the glue, and it wouldn’t come loose.

  “This is going to hurt.”

  The boy gave a grunt that seemed to sap him of the last of his strength, and he wobbled on his feet like a first-time drunk. Geiger took hold of him and guided him a few steps to the couch.

  “Sit,” he said, lowering the boy onto the soft maroon leather. “I’m going to get some alcohol—that will help get the tape off. And when I get the tape off, we’ll talk about your mother and father.”

  He walked down the hall and into the bathroom. There was a small shower, toilet, and pedestal sink with a face-sized oval mirror above it. He knelt at a chrome serving cart, knees resting on a floor inlaid with a diamond pattern of ash and teak, and reached to the bottom shelf.

  It occurred to him that his voice had sounded like an intruder’s. Except for phone calls with Harry and minimal exchanges with the cat, he never had reason to speak at home. The thickness in his head added to the strangeness, producing a tinny sound in his ears that seemed to trail his words like a ship’s wake.

  He found the rubbing alcohol, pulled a few tissues from their box, and came back down the hall. “We’ll figure things out. We need to be careful how we—”

  He stared at the boy, who lay on the sofa on his side. The quiet breath of sleep ebbed and flowed from his nose.

  Geiger went to the back door, unlocked it, and stepped out onto the stoop. The overhead motion-sensor light came on; twenty feet in front of him, a lone insomniac squirrel froze on the grass, primed for catastrophe.

  PART TWO

  10

  The hot needles of the shower lanced Harry’s anxiety like a boil, and helped take him away to a place where his thoughts could catch their breath and he could begin to get a glimpse of the new future.

  He had walked home through the narrow, hazy streets of Chinatown and over the Brooklyn Bridge, working up worst-case scenarios. He already had seventy thousand sitting in a safe deposit box. If it came down to it, he’d have no problem selling the apartment. He’d have to do it under the radar, for cash, and most likely through Carmine, so he’d take a hit. But he was up to the minute on the asking or sale price of every two-bedroom brownstone apartment in Brooklyn Heights with a city view, so he was sure he could put another three or four hundred grand in his pocket.

  That was scenario number one, based on the premise that he would never work again. He couldn’t imagine himself taking another job. With no current employment record and no references, who would hire him? And what would he do—fix motherboards in a computer shop’s back room? Hawk cyber software online? Drive a cab? No way, but at least he could lead an unemployed, cash-only life for seven or eight years. As far as the government was concerned, Harry Boddicker had ceased to exist. His Con Ed and phone bills were addressed to Thomas Jones. He hadn’t paid taxes in a decade. He could pretty much disappear.

  And then there was scenario number two, which added his sister to the equation. Unless she finally gave up her seat on the bizarro bus or the evil bump in his groin murdered him first, in four years she would suck him dry without even knowing he existed.

  When Harry had arrived home, the prospect of having to converse with anyone had made him feel nauseous. He woke the nurse, gave her an extra fifty, and shooed her out the door, telling her he’d call tomorrow when he was ready to send Lily back. A peek into the second bedroom, at the end of the hall, revealed Lily asleep on top of the bedcovers in a tucked, fetal position. She’d always slept that way.

  Now Harry turned off the shower and stepped out. The Ray Charles greatest hits CD he’d set to “repeat” was halfway through another cycle, and the soul-cleansing voice made him feel a little better. He fought the impulse to fish around in his groin while wiping himself down with one of the oversized Frette towels from Bed Bath & Beyond. He smiled wanly—he wouldn’t be spending forty bucks on a towel again—and walked into the living room. He hadn’t turned on the lights when he’d come in, and outside the sunrise was only a hint of the day to come, so he didn’t see the figure on the couch until he was almost in front of it.

  “Sit down, Harry.”

  Hall’s statement was one-third invitation, two-thirds command, and his voice had the gruff edge of someone dealing with heavy physical pain. As surprised as Harry was, he was equally embarrassed by his nakedness.

  “Can I put something on?”

  “Sit, Harry. Now.”

  Harry lowered himself into his favorite leather chair. It felt warm and sticky against his bare back, thighs, and ass. As casually as he could, he put his hands in his lap, covering his genitals.

  “Your partner is a very strange guy,” Hall said. “Full of surprises.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He made a big mistake, Harry.”

  “Yeah. I already told him that.”

  “Did he agree with you?”

  “Geiger and I don’t have those kinds of conversations.” Harry shifted in his seat, his damp skin making a sucking sound as it pulled away from the leather. “Could I at least have my coat?” He pointed at his sport jacket, which was lying on the couch where he’d tossed it when he’d come home. Hall picked it up and lobbed it to him, and Harry spread it over his lap.

  “I want the boy, Harry. Right away.”

  “You got your money back. My guess is that’s the best you’re going to do.”

  Hall leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs. “I don’t care about the money, Harry.” He took a deep breath, his lips spreading in a flat, wincing grimace. His hand went to his sternum and his fingertips gently explored the bruised area. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered. “What’ve you got to drink?”

  “Sorry, I don’t drink anymore. Sure wish I did.”

  Hall stood up, walked to the window, and stared out at the East River. In the dim light, Harry could see that the back of Hall’s shirt and collar had a long red stain, and the back of his head had a small white patch on it. As Ray Charles finished singing “Georgia,” reflections of the lights on the bridge floated on the water’s surface like globs of golden oil.

  “Great voice,” Hall said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Where are they, Harry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where does Geiger live?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  “You’ve been partners for how long?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “And you don’t know where he lives?”

  “Never been to his place. Like you said—he’s a very strange guy.”

  Harry was doing his best to sit very still and keep his tone low-key because he was beg
inning to feel truly scared. It wasn’t a visceral, heart-in-the-throat fear of imminent violence. But something about Hall, something about the atmosphere in the room, something about everything was slowly heating Harry up, gathering loose doubts and confusion like tinder and stoking the fear inside him.

  “Harry, I let you finish your shower because I wanted you relaxed, thinking straight.” Hall turned back to the room. “What’s your read on me, Harry—right now?”

  “You’re in a lot of pain?”

  “What else?”

  “Running out of patience?”

  “Bull’s-eye. Now…” Hall went into his pants pocket and took out Harry’s cell phone. “I’ve checked your cell—there are no sends or receiveds on it.”

  “It’s programmed that way.”

  “Whatever, but I need you to call Geiger right now—and tell him that if he doesn’t get the kid back to me asap, you’re going to have a real bad time of it. Maybe I’ll even take you to Dalton. Think you can do that?”

  Harry felt a quick bubble of panic rise up, but then he found himself biting his tongue to keep from laughing. He didn’t doubt Hall’s sincerity, but the accoutrements to this little drama—his ridiculous nakedness, Ray Charles’s doleful voice, the summer dawn reaching the river—all conspired to decorate the horror of the moment in a tacky wrapping that smacked of parody. Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that fate was playing his last moments on earth for laughs.

  Harry took a breath and collected himself. “Geiger won’t pick up,” he said. “He told me not to call him and said he’d call me if he needed to. Even if I left a message and told him what you plan on doing, I don’t think that would change his plans, whatever they are. And I wouldn’t call him anyway.”