“‘He sprang for me with a half-roar, gripping my arm. I had steeled myself to brazen it out, though I was trembling inwardly…’”
* * *
“‘… though I was trembling inwardly,’” the nine-year-old boy read aloud from the book.
The boy’s father sat before the stone hearth, his thick body clothed in faded denim overalls. His right hand pulled at his dense clipped beard. He drew deeply on his cigarette, and as he exhaled the smoke turned pale amber from the fire’s light.
The cabin was the work of a master carpenter. The walls and cathedral roof were made of massive split logs. Windows were set high, so the view from within was only of lush treetops and infinite sky. The floor was an astonishing work of art, a detailed re-creation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the thousands of inlays a testament to virtuosity and obsession.
“‘He had gripped me by the biceps with his single hand, and when that grip tightened I wilted and shrieked aloud. My feet went out from under me. I simply could not stand upright and endure the agony.’”
“Stop now, son. He is overcome with pain, but the question is—why?”
“Because … because he is weak?”
“Weak, yes—but not of the body. True strength has nothing to do with muscles. His mind is weak because he doesn’t know pain—and what we don’t know, we fear. And it is fear that makes us weak.” He sucked on his cigarette. “Watch now.” He blew on the tip, sending the loose ash drifting away, revealing the hot orange flush. He lowered the cigarette and ground it into the top of his hand without a flinch or a sound.
“You see, son? Not the body. The mind.”
* * *
Geiger became aware that Mr. Memz had finished his recitation and was now sitting back in his chair. With his eyes on Geiger, he flicked his butt away and offered up the smile of a charming lunatic. Geiger took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and held it out to Mr. Memz, who took the money and kissed it.
“Question, BT.”
“What?”
“During my splendid performance, you weren’t looking at the page and following along. So how do you know I got it right?”
“I’ve read it before. Many times.”
“Why didn’t you say so, man?”
“Because I’d forgotten.”
He started away. It was a downhill journey, and the spinning earth tugged at him. The heat rising off the street turned the view into a rippling, molten curtain. Two men at the entrance to the auto body shop wielded clamorous pneumatic tools, loosening bolts on the wheel hubs of a jacked-up, blood-red Magnum. The sun made the sweat on their bare mahogany backs a glistening polish.
A flash of light pulled at Geiger’s eyes. He turned and saw a silver Lexus with tinted windows cruising slowly up the street. Geiger crouched down behind a parked car and watched the Lexus pass by and then pull over at Mr. Memz’s post. The driver’s window came down and smoke drifted out from inside the car. A hand came out holding up a six-inch square card, its glossy surface glinting in the sun. Mr. Memz leaned forward in his chair and looked closely at the card. His lips moved, but Geiger couldn’t hear what he said.
The dark glass slid up and the Lexus pulled away. Geiger remembered that Hall’s insurance card said he drove a Lexus, but he couldn’t remember what color. His memory wouldn’t give up the information. He watched the car turn onto Amsterdam and drive out of sight, and then he moved quickly to Mr. Memz, leaning down to his ear from behind.
“Mr. Memz.”
The vet seized up in a flinch as if someone had hollered, “Incoming!” He twisted around.
“Fuck, man! Don’t be coming up on me like that!”
“I need to ask you something,” Geiger said.
Mr. Memz’s back rose and fell with a deep breath. “BT, I think I liked you better when you kept your mouth shut.”
“The Lexus. What did the driver want?”
“He showed me a photograph of somebody who looked a lot like you. Asked if I’d seen the guy around and said his name was Geiger. That your name, BT? Geiger?”
Where did they get a photograph of him? Geiger felt his ruptured seams being tested again. The more the world poured into him, the wider they stretched.
“What did you tell him?”
Mr. Memz’s thumbnail raked his beard. “‘I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades.’”
“What?”
“Article Four, man. Code of Conduct. You don’t give up your own.” Mr. Memz smiled. “I told the guy I’d never seen you.”
As Geiger rose, he saw a double image of Mr. Memz that was gauzy at its edges. He knew what it meant, and what was on the way.
“Thank you,” he said, and headed for home.
“Hey, BT,” Mr. Memz called out. “Dude’s got sniper’s eyes! I know ’em when I see ’em, man, so watch your skinny ass!”
* * *
As soon as he entered the code to the front door lock and stepped inside, Geiger saw the boy sitting at the desk. Three of the black binders were spread open before him.
Ezra slowly turned to Geiger, his eyes ablaze. “This is what you do? This?”
The pressure in Geiger’s head was almost unbearable, but he had the presence of mind to reach for the keypad and punch in the interior code.
“What’s wrong with you?” cried the boy, rising from the chair. He was frantic, panicky, his body swaying and his arms waving, like a jack-in-the-box set free of its coil. The boy’s movements left stuttering trails across Geiger’s vision.
“Don’t talk now,” Geiger said. His voice reached him from somewhere far away. The visitation was very close now; the tiny lights had come calling. The textbooks called it the “aura”—a rare, warping prognostic of the migraine.
“If this is what you do, then why didn’t you do it to me?”
The boy was yelling now, the volume ramping up the pitch of his voice and whetting it. His words cut like a knife.
“Don’t … talk,” Geiger said.
Geiger started toward him, but the movement triggered a vertiginous light-headedness and he stopped. He heard his own gathering breath; it roared in his ears as if coming from a stranger standing behind him. He dropped the bags and turned for the CD rack. He’d need the music before he went into the closet. He tried to focus on the countless shimmering jewel cases, but the slightest shift of eye in socket rendered the titles on their spines indecipherable. The aura’s magnitude was beyond his past experiences—the degree of distortion, the recasting of light into barbed stars, the conversion of symmetry into chaos and flux. When he reached toward a shelf, the assault began, an incendiary device going off in his skull, near the crest, sending white-hot tendrils down toward the backs of his eyes.
But Ezra, his fear running wild, was not finished. “Why did you save me?” he shouted.
“Stop!” Geiger yelled, and then the migraine hit him full force. He howled and fell to his knees as if smitten.
Ezra stumbled back against the desk. “What … what’s the matter with you?!”
Swaying, Geiger grabbed hold of his temples. He made a noise that might have been a word.
“I’m sorry!” said the boy. “I’m sorry! Please don’t flip out on me!”
Geiger started crawling for the sanctuary of the closet, his fingers feeling the smooth marquetry, his eyes shut tight to keep the light at bay. He extended his right hand until it brushed against the closet door, then turned the cold brass knob and dragged himself inside. He pulled the door closed and let the darkness come.
Gradually he became aware that Ezra was calling to him.
“Geiger! Say something!”
“Music,” Geiger croaked. “Put on the music.”
He lay in the dark, his right forearm a pillow for his head, his left arm holding his knees up close to his chest. His brain was on fire. Something had been breached. The pain was breathtaking, and now it had a face. Geiger could see it: a phantom gaining flesh and blood.
The
n he heard music. A single strand of it—elegant, melancholy, consoling. He closed his eyes. He could see the colored puddles of sound, taste the notes, feel them falling on him like a cold rain, cooling the fire in his mind.
* * *
When Ezra had heard Geiger’s plea for music, he had dashed for the CD rack but then swerved to the couch when he caught sight of his violin case. Now he stood at the closet door, his trembling fingers drawing the bow across the instrument’s strings. Nestled beneath his chin, the violin was more than a comfort; it felt like crucial ballast, the weight of something known and good that could prevent him from being tossed about by the maelstrom all around him. He closed his eyes, and as he played, there came a flicker of understanding—he, too, needed the music to ease the pain and take him to his own place of peace.
14
Harry had always steered clear of Internet cafés. He didn’t want somebody sitting next to him, craning a neck. And he didn’t trust these places—even if they had online security, it would be useless. But desperate times called, so here he sat at a counter in Charlotte’s Web Café, at one of its six laptops. Lily sat to his left, her spindly fingers picking walnut crumbs off a scone, holding each up close to her eyes like a forty-niner admiring a shiny, newfound nugget.
Outside, the sun was a shimmering white wafer turning the city into a skillet. It was the kind of heat that turns a driver’s honk into an insult, a frown into a threat. But the café was well air-conditioned, which made Harry inclined to forgive the low-fat jazz that simpered from the wall speakers. And the coffee he’d bought from the Asian guy working behind the counter wasn’t bad either.
Harry rolled a sip of coffee around in his mouth and thought about how to word his plea to Geiger. He had logged on to AIM as Stickler and checked out the status of GGGG. Geiger was active. What should he write? How about “I’m about to lose it, man. I hurt all over and I’ve got a crazy person in tow and those fuckers are following me. Just tell me your address.” How had it come to this? He didn’t even know where the one person he considered a comrade lived.
He’d thought about calling Carmine and asking for help or at least a place to lie low, but the man gave him the creeps. He’d last seen him a year ago, at a session. The Jones had been supplying Carmine with bathroom fixtures for some townhouses, and Carmine had been tipped off that, as he’d put it to Harry, “the prick likes to spell ‘refurbished’ N-E-W.” The Jones had caved within minutes while Carmine watched, sipping Chartreuse VEP Green that cost one hundred and eighty-five dollars. After Harry had repacked the Jones for transport back to one of Carmine’s safe houses—an oxymoron if Harry had ever heard one—Carmine had come to him, squeezed his shoulder, and said:
“Harry, Harry. Our boy’s a thing of beauty, isn’t he? It’s like watching a chess match in a boxing ring.”
“Nicely put, sir.”
“Kasparov and Ali rolled into one. He’s a genius, our boy.”
Harry still remembered the chuckle that had finished the exchange; it was as smooth as the perfectly folded silk handkerchief that peeked from Carmine’s suit pocket. Carmine served as a reminder to Harry that some people did exactly what they pleased and got everything they wanted, usually because they had eyes in the back of their heads, a seemingly endless supply of aces and dirks up their sleeves, and no qualms or guilt about using them.
Right now, the only person who seemed knowable to Harry was Geiger. Even though yesterday’s bizarre act had sent Harry’s world off its axis, Geiger was still his only hope, the one hand that could pull him out of free fall. Geiger was all he had left.
Harry’s fingers went to the keyboard.
* * *
Ezra was still so frightened he couldn’t sit still. He wandered through Geiger’s loft, staring at the intricate floor as a way to control his panic. Geiger had been in the closet long enough for the CD player to finish a Honegger sonata and get halfway through Fauré’s Sonata in E Minor. But Ezra had no idea whether the music was helping. The attack had come so suddenly and looked so violent that to him it seemed entirely possible that death would be the final result.
Ezra opened the closet door. Geiger’s fetal position made it difficult to tell if he was breathing, so Ezra gently nudged Geiger’s shin with his sneaker’s toe. Geiger’s left arm instantly pulled his knees in tighter against his chest; he curled up like a pill bug expecting an imminent attack.
“Are you asleep?” Ezra whispered.
He took a step inside and sat down beside Geiger. Leaning back, he stared at himself in the mirrors. That was what his father was: a visible but untouchable reflection. He was a two-weeks-a-year presence, or a voice on the phone, or an IM partner. A burst of heat ran down Ezra’s back, equal parts anger and fear. He wondered where his father was. He wished he was dead; he prayed he was safe. He hated him for his selfishness. It had put Ezra in this closet, and now monsters prowled the streets, searching for his scent.
Ezra rose. Careful not to jostle Geiger, he went to the desk and sat in Geiger’s chair in front of the computer. The AIM icon at the bottom of the monitor beckoned him. He clicked it, signed in as Guest, and set up a message to BigBossMan, the name on the account his father used for their sessions.
Ezra glanced over at Geiger’s dark, tucked figure, and then typed:
GUEST: Its EZBoy. Where are you?
He clicked “send” and sat back, staring at the boarded-up windows before him. No light made its way through, and only ghosts of the street’s shrillest sounds crept in past the soundproofing.
The ping of an incoming message straightened Ezra’s spine. He took a breath and leaned toward the screen. The upper right-hand quadrant displayed the message in a small, sans-serif font.
STICKLER: hey. its me.
Stickler? Ezra sank back into the soft leather. Who was Stickler? The greeting seemed personal, even intimate. Ezra’s hands reached out to the keyboard but only hovered there, his concentration failing him. For a moment he felt almost nauseous with fear—for himself, for his father, for the man in the closet. If Geiger didn’t wake up, what then? Ezra had no idea where he was, but he did know that he was locked in from the inside.
Ezra took a long breath and let his fingers fall to the keys.
* * *
Harry stared at the message.
GGGG: who are you?
This was absurdity of a new sort, the kind of cosmic joke only a petty God with too much time on his hands would stoop to pull. Harry was so astonished, he spoke aloud without realizing it.
“What the fuck?”
Heads all around the café rose, eyes swiveling to locate the boor. Even Lily looked up from her scone project, licking her fingers like a cat cleaning its paws. Harry ignored the gawkers and started typing.
STICKLER: who am i? who are you?
GGGG: this isnt geiger. im ezra.
STICKLER: the kid that got snatched?
GGGG: yes. who are you?
STICKLER: harry. geigers friend. where is he? go get him, right now.
GGGG: hes sleeping.
STICKLER: wake him up.
GGGG: im scared to. something happened to him. something bad.
STICKLER: whats that mean?
GGGG: he was really freaky. he had a kind of fit.
STICKLER: fit?
GGGG: screaming and stuff, on his knees. in terrible pain. sort of blinded. then he crawled into a closet and went to sleep on the floor.
Harry stopped. Had Geiger had a stroke? A heart attack? An epileptic seizure? But even as he wondered what had happened, Harry realized that he wasn’t shocked at the thought that Geiger might have had a meltdown. The episode at the session room and the decision to take the kid with him had only been a preview. For years he’d thought of Geiger as a man whose enormous strength was matched only by the massive weight of his burdens. Had they finally brought him to his knees? At the first rub of the question, Harry knew he’d been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Harry started typing a
gain.
STICKLER: ill come there then. where are you?
GGGG: what do you mean? im at geigers.
STICKLER: i know. where is that?
GGGG: i dont know. I was blindfolded when he brought me in and all the windows are boarded up. i cant see outside. how come you don’t know? i thought you were his friend.
Harry rummaged around in the place where he kept his meager stock of patience, but the cupboard was almost bare. He was stretched thin, fed up with his own trespasses more than anyone else’s. And dealing with kids always gave him the heebie-jeebies. Their transparency made him feel clumsy, artless. He was going to have to walk a tightrope to the boy.
STICKLER: listen, kid. i know youre scared. i dont blame you. but i am his friend. ive just never been to his place. remember there was another guy there when he put you in the car? that was me.
GGGG: okay. but how are you going to find me? i dont know where i am and im locked in here.
STICKLER: ill think of something.
GGGG: hurry.
Frustrated, Harry slammed his palm down on the counter, sending a loud whomp rolling through the place. Lily twitched and heads bobbed back up.
“Jesus Christ!” he growled.
The Asian counter guy arrived, hovering at his side, espresso-stained fingers tugging at the beard surrounding his frown.
“You’re making too much noise, mister,” he said. “Much too much.”
Harry said nothing, his eyes locked on the screen.
“Hey, mister? Hear me?”
Harry looked up, molars fused. One word escaped through his teeth. “Yeah?”
“You’re making too much noise.”
The Inquisitor: A Novel Page 15