“Cat.”
“That’s what you call him? ‘Cat’?”
Geiger gave the cat a short, hard scruffing on the head, then filled the empty bowl with water. The cat settled in for a drink. The boy’s lips bunched up in displeasure as he watched Geiger line up half a dozen stalks of asparagus on the counter and cut off their pale ends in one motion.
“That stuff for me?” the boy asked. Geiger nodded. “For breakfast? Don’t you have any, like, y’know—food food? Cereal? Munchies? Chips?”
“No.”
“Man…” The boy’s voicing stretched the word out into two plaintive syllables. “Can we go get something?”
“No. No going out now. There are also apples and pears.”
“I’ll have a pear,” Ezra said bleakly. He went to the bowl, picked one up, and bit into it deeply. “Good,” he said, nodding, and took another bite without swallowing. He drew a finger softly down the cat’s spine; the tail and haunches rose at the caress.
“Geiger…”
“Yes?”
“I think he’s in the city someplace. My dad.” Geiger put the vegetables back in the bowl. “He left me a note. He said he had stuff to do in the city but he’d try to be home later. And he told me to keep the door locked.”
“But you don’t know why they’re looking for him?”
“Uh-uh.” The boy shrugged, and a sigh left him as his shoulders came back down. He looked like he was deflating. “Can I call my mother?”
“Yes. Soon. Is she at home?”
“No. She’s on vacation—sorta. She’s in New Hampshire, in a forest. She said it’s called a ‘silent word retreat’ or something like that. She calls my cell at around ten every morning. Then they take her phone away from her till the next day.” He suddenly punched the counter, and the cat looked up. “Shit—those guys took my cell!”
“No. I have it.”
Geiger took the cell phone from his pocket, turned it on, and put it on the counter. He’d wait until she made her call, then he’d get on the line. It would be tricky. My name is Geiger. Your ex-husband is missing. Your son was abducted, he’s with me now. You have to come to New York right away …
“This will be hard for her,” Geiger said. “I think it’s better if we wait for her to call you—like she usually does. All right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Ezra stroked the cat again. “Can I pick him up?”
“Yes. Scratch his scar. He likes that.”
Ezra picked the cat up and cradled him in his arms. His pointing finger went to work on the grizzled old wound, and the animal began to purr loudly.
“Man, listen to that.”
“Ezra. How many men came to your father’s apartment?”
“Two grabbed me. I think maybe I heard another one in the living room. Not sure.”
“I only met one man,” said Geiger.
“And he just let you take me away?”
“No. I knocked him out.”
The boy’s eyes widened with childish awe. “Really? You, like, hit him with something?”
“My fist.”
Geiger found the act of conversation enervating. There were so many new things on different levels to deal with: accommodating the boy’s presence and voice and questions, listening and responding, focusing on what action he might take.
“One of them was a big black dude. He said he’d kill me if I screamed.”
“He was trying to scare you,” Geiger said.
The boy’s voice tightened with anger, his lips crimping. “Well, I hope he was the one you hit. I hope you really beat the shit out of him.” He turned and walked back toward the couch with his new friend in his arms.
A thought unfurled in Geiger’s head like a “Grand Opening” banner: Nothing is as it was. Everything has changed. He felt set loose into the world, keenly aware of something lost and left behind, like a soldier who still senses the presence of an amputated limb.
Ezra called out: “Your cell phone beeped.”
Geiger walked to his desk. The screen on his cell phone read “1 Message.” He picked it up and punched a key. Instead of the usual “H” or “C” he saw “212-555-8668.” Reading the small font made the numbers’ edges blur and brought a dull ache to the dark side of his eyeballs. He’d never had a call from anyone but Harry or Carmine—not even a wrong number. He chose the “listen” option. It was Harry, the voice cutting through a background of mushy, chaotic noise.
As he listened to Harry’s message, Geiger shut his eyes. He saw a sky filling with clouds, a roiling, ominous crop. He tried to visualize a god puffing up his cheeks and spewing out a strong wind that would sweep the clouds away, but none came.
“This is really cool,” said the boy.
Geiger opened his eyes and saw Ezra standing before the custom-made CD racks, exploring the rows of the vast music library. The boy tilted forward, a particular title eliciting a grunt of interest.
“That’s the Dumbarton Oaks Stravinsky conducted, right?”
“Yes.”
“How many CDs you got?”
“Eighteen hundred and twenty-three.”
“Man, that’s a lot.”
Cell phone in hand, Geiger started for the back door again. “Be right back.”
“Can I put some music on?” asked Ezra.
“Yes.”
Outside, the mounting heat of the day was burning away the clouds and damp thickness. The opening strains of Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet reached him like a tap on the shoulder, and Geiger turned to the sound like someone encountering an old friend in an unlikely place. Then he looked down at his phone and pushed the “call back” button. After one ring, Harry picked up.
“Hello?” Harry said.
“It’s me.”
“Jeez, man. It’s good to hear you.”
Even with all the background noise, Geiger could make out Harry’s sigh rustling through open lips. “Tell me what happened, Harry.”
The request was a skeleton key opening the tumblers in Harry’s mind. “A motherfucking train wreck is what happened! Jesus fucking Christ—how about guns and murder threats?” As he spoke, Harry picked up momentum, each word like a tiny hit of speed fueling him to the next. “Bodies getting tossed around. And blood, man. A lot of fucking blood!”
“Harry, slow down. Facts.”
Geiger could see Harry talking, the familiar tone and cadence, see his scowl, his wriggling discomfort. It suddenly struck him that Harry was the only person he actually knew.
“Okay, facts. I walked home, took a shower, and found Hall sitting in my living room. He tells me to call you—I said no. He says he’ll kill me if I don’t—I still said no.”
As Harry related the story, Geiger allowed himself a momentary glimpse of its underlying import: another human being made an act of sacrifice on his behalf. He quickly pushed the thought aside.
Harry finished his account and took a deep breath. “Jesus, man—I almost killed somebody this morning!”
“How did Hall find you?”
“I don’t know, but he said something that makes me think he’s got access to cell signal tracking. That’s why I told you not to call my phone.”
“Was there a third man? The boy thinks three men came to his apartment.”
“There were only two in mine.”
Geiger’s peripheral attention took note of a violin suddenly injecting a jarring melody into Webern’s string quartet. It rose above the other players, but another full measure played before Geiger recognized it as a signature snippet from Mozart’s Second Symphony. He ran back inside and saw the boy’s cell phone on the kitchen counter. Ezra was picking it up as its Mozart ringtone sounded again.
“Don’t answer!” Geiger yelled.
The boy flinched and then turned as Geiger came at him. “Don’t hurt me! Please!” His body folded up, cowering against the counter. “Please don’t hurt me!”
Geiger snatched the phone out of the boy’s hand and jammed his thumb down on the “end” bu
tton. But the ringtone sounded again, so he hurled it at the wall and it shattered.
Geiger looked over at the boy. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
The boy’s eyes glistened. He nodded, but tears started down his cheeks. When a sob broke from his chest, he raced out of the kitchen and Geiger heard the bathroom door slam.
“Geiger?”
It was Harry’s voice. Geiger glanced at the cell phone in his hand.
“Geiger! What the hell’s going on?”
“Harry,” he said into his phone, “how do they track cell phones?”
“You know—triangulation. Cell towers are always listening to your signal, handing you off from one to another as you move around, figuring out which one will give you the best service.”
Geiger saw himself in the Ludlow Street viewing room, taking the boy’s cell phone from Hall’s jacket—so Hall knew the boy’s number. He drew in a deep breath, trying to stem the flood of adrenaline. He heard the shower start, and it took him a few seconds to understand what the sound was, because the only time he’d ever heard it was when he was in it.
“Harry, do you have to place a call or answer one for them to get a fix on you?”
“No. As long as a cell phone is on, all it has to do is ring and they can track it.”
“How close a fix can they get?”
“Pretty tight. Three or four blocks, maybe closer.”
“What did Hall say to make you think he could track a cell?”
“He told me to call you, I said no, and then I told him that even if I did you wouldn’t answer. Hall said, ‘Just make the call. We’ll take it from there.’ What’s that sound like to you, man?”
“Harry, the boy’s cell phone just rang.”
“Fuck. What’re you gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Harry.”
The words seemed to hang in plain sight before Geiger, mocking him, a freshly coined motto for a new age. I don’t know.
“I have to get him to his mother,” Geiger said. “She’s in New Hampshire now.”
Geiger heard Harry mutter under his breath and then say, “Lily, come back here. Lily! Goddamnit.… Listen, Geiger, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”
“Harry, wait…”
His answer was a dial tone. Geiger stood wondering what he would have said next. The quartet played on, and he walked toward the bathroom.
He rapped on the door. “Ezra?”
The shower turned off.
“What?” said the boy.
“I couldn’t let you answer the phone.”
“Why not?” The question was a plea.
“If you did, those men might have figured out where you are.”
“How’m I gonna talk to my mom now?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
The door opened a crack.
“Do you have something I can wear? When I was in the trunk I … pissed my pants.”
The humiliation in his words hung in the air.
“I’ll get you some things,” Geiger said. “Give me your dirty clothes. I’ll put them in the washer.”
“Thank you.”
One of Ezra’s hands came out with his soiled things. Geiger took them to the kitchen and started a wash cycle, then went to his dresser. As he stood there, an image and echo of something rushed up from deep inside him. He was in darkness, a door was opening, and a silhouette spoke in a gruff voice:
“Did you piss yourself, boy?”
“No, Pa. I held it in.”
“Good.”
Geiger grabbed some underpants, a pair of shorts, and a T-shirt from the drawers and headed back to the bathroom.
12
The more Harry thought about Hall, the more his anxiety tilted toward paranoia, so when he hailed a taxi outside the laundromat and got Lily in the back with him, he told the cabbie to go into Manhattan and drop them at Seventy-sixth and Columbus, because the closest thing to a safe haven he could think of was the diner. He’d considered a hotel but decided against it. He didn’t have a lot of cash on him—he’d cursed himself for forgetting to grab more before he left the apartment—and without an ATM card he’d have to nurse along what he was carrying in his wallet. Besides, front desk clerks tended to notice people when they checked in, especially if one side of your face was swollen and purple and the only luggage you had was a crazy person. But nobody noticed anyone in diners. You went in, sat down, and ate. Maybe you read the paper, or had a conversation if somebody was with you, but people watching wasn’t big on the menu.
The taxi smelled of sweat and pine scent, and country music pumped out of the radio. They were halfway across the Manhattan Bridge. The cabbie’s baseball cap was tilted back on his head, and he slapped the steering wheel in time with the snare drum’s crisp beats, making sport of the bridge’s crowded, narrow lanes.
Lily sat beside Harry. She had lost weight since he’d bought her the sky-blue blouse, and it made her look even more like a child. He realized he’d have to keep a close eye on her until he could get her back to the home. She might get hungry, for one thing. And drugs—he had no idea what meds she was on, if any. He took her hand in his.
“You always held my hand, remember?” He asked the question with no expectation of getting an answer. “Even when we were grown up, if we were walking to dinner or the movies, you’d take my hand. Remember that?” He gave her hand a squeeze, but she stared straight ahead, fingers unresponsive to his. Still, he felt a little lighter for the memory of an old, precious bond when they were impossibly different people.
The throb in Harry’s head had become a dull, flat thud. He leaned to the plastic partition. “Hey, man. Think you could kill the radio for a while?”
“You don’t like country music?” said the cabbie. His voice had an oiled, good ol’ boy slide that surprised Harry.
“I just need a little quiet time. Got a headache.”
“Can do, buddy.”
The cabbie punched at the radio and the sound cut off, and as Harry leaned back Lily jolted to life, her tiny hands grabbing the lapels of his sport coat, fists tugging him back and forth with surprising force, like a child seized by a tantrum. She was mewling loudly, a tortured sound that made the driver’s head whip around.
Harry gripped her at the wrists. “Lily! What? What is it?”
“Don’t do that!” she howled. “Don’t do that!”
“Lily—stop!”
“No—no—noooo!”
The sound was almost more than Harry could bear, a siren of madness and loss. “Sweet Jesus,” said the cabbie. “What’s she want, man?”
And then Harry understood. “Turn the radio back on!”
The cabbie jabbed at the dashboard, the bright guitar streams returned, and Lily’s yowling slowed to a stop like a windup toy running down.
“Well, all right!” whooped the cabbie. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!” He chuckled and gave the horn four quick taps as he headed down the off-ramp.
Harry gently pulled at Lily’s wrists. Her clenched fists came away from his lapels and something fell into Harry’s lap. It was a button-sized black disk, an inch across, a quarter-inch thick. He picked it up. It was made of some kind of plastic, shiny and smooth on one side and sticky on the other. Harry repositioned Lily against the seat and then settled back, rolling the tracer between thumb and forefinger like a lucky coin.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself.
A scene flashed in front of him like a three-second cut in a movie trailer. Nighttime. Ludlow Street. Ray in his homeless person guise getting in Harry’s face, then grabbing him by the lapels and pulling him close.
Harry turned over his lapels and spotted a small circle of gummy residue on the fabric of one. He nodded with admiration and astonishment. That’s how they’d found his place so easily. Ray had planted the thing on him. A whole production before the session, the little girl included, just in case something went wrong later on.
Harry took the tracer and stuc
k it on the back of the seat in front of him.
At the bottom of the ramp from the bridge, the cabbie stopped as the light changed to yellow at Canal Street. He turned around again and gave Lily a smile. He had a ruddy scrub brush of a mustache, and the gap between his front teeth amplified the good ol’ boy aura.
“You okay now, honey?” he said.
Lily’s head was turned to her window. Outside, a bus idled beside the taxi, rattling and snorting. She said nothing.
Harry reached out and pushed her hair back from her eyes and let his fingertips caress her cheek. She took no notice of the gesture.
“I’ll tell you something, buddy,” said the cabbie. “You’re a good man, the way you look after her. The world today—folks don’t treat their own like they used to.” He took off his cap and ran a hand through his thick tangerine hair. “They talk that stuff ’bout global warming? Well, it seems to me the warmer it gets on the outside, the colder we get in our hearts. Hell, look at me. I got a sister, too—she’s divorced, lives down in Baton Rouge—and I ain’t seen her in four years.” He turned back to the windshield. “I’ll tell you, buddy, you bring the shame up in me. When I go on break, I’m gonna give her a call.”
Harry turned around and squinted out the back window at the long line of vehicles idling in the drizzle behind them. Farther back, the cars and cabs melted into a stubborn river fog. Harry felt as if the world had suddenly become very small.
He turned back to the driver. “Hey, I got a question.”
“Shoot.”
“For an extra twenty, can you step on it, zig and zag, shave a couple of lights?”
The cabbie chuckled. “Somebody following you, buddy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, whatever. You want the hammer down, you got it.”
The light turned green and the cab lurched forward and veered sharply into the next lane. A horn blared in their wake.
Harry closed his eyes. “De Kooning, my ass.”
* * *
Ezra opened the bathroom door. Geiger’s shorts almost reached his knees, ballooning around his legs. His bare chest and arms had half a dozen purple bruises from the previous day’s manhandling, and the stripes on his face were redder now.
The Inquisitor: A Novel Page 12