The Inquisitor: A Novel

by Smith, Mark Allen

  “Was I? Sorry.”

  “So no more yelling,” said the counter guy. “People don’t want to hear that. Okay?”

  Harry placed his palms on the counter and took a shaky breath.

  “I heard you,” he said. “No more yelling. I got it.”

  “Okay,” said the counter guy, and then he leaned toward Lily, who sported a coating of crumbs from her lips to her lap. “And please, lady. Can you try and be a little neater?” His finger directed her nonexistent attention to a sign on the wall that read, PLEASE KEEP FOOD OFF THE COMPUTERS. He nodded at her. “Okay, lady? Thanks very much.”

  Harry rose from his chair and came nose to nose with the counter guy. He was suddenly so angry that he felt as light as a feather, almost giddy with malice.

  “Listen, man,” he said. “I’ll finish soon as I can, without another sound, and then we’ll leave. But do not talk to her.”

  The counter guy framed his response with a faint, inquisitive smile. “Are you threatening me?” he asked. “Because, mister, you don’t look like you should be threatening anybody.”

  Harry’s hand went up to his face—he’d forgotten about its battered state. His rush died away instantly, replaced by a wave of confusion and shame.

  The laptop called to him with another merry ding.

  GGGG: you still there? huh?

  Hearing the computer’s chime, Lily started singing. “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock…”

  As she sang, only her wide, pale lips moved, and her frozen stare and immobile body were bizarrely at odds with the lyric.

  The counter guy looked at Lily and then turned back to Harry. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I said never mind her, okay?”

  But some synapse in Lily was misfiring, and she began singing louder. As her volume rose so did she, standing up with a touch of a wobble.

  “She high on something?” asked the counter guy.

  “Yeah, high on life,” said Harry. “Now I’m just going to finish up the IM and then get out of here, okay?”

  Lily, still singing, came to the end of the song and raised both arms high. “That’s the jingle bell rock!”

  This last burst took something out of her, and, reeling, she flapped her hands for balance. They came down on the counter, spilling Harry’s coffee and spraying the laptops.

  “Okay, that’s it!” said the counter guy. “You’ve both got to leave.”

  As the man hustled away for a rag, Harry grabbed Lily and shoved her back down on her stool.

  “Stay! Don’t move!”

  * * *

  Frantic with worry as he waited for Harry’s response, Ezra stood up and stepped away from the computer. He wanted to stomp his feet and yell, but if he did he might wake the monster in the closet. Ezra didn’t believe Geiger was a monster, but he was certain there was one living inside him. Ezra had felt its wrath when he’d watched it bring Geiger to his knees, and he didn’t want to rouse it again.

  Trying to contain his panic, Ezra wandered away from the desk and spied the two bags lying where Geiger had dropped them near the CD racks. He picked up the bag with the Burger King logo, stuck a hand inside, and took out a burger. In two bites he’d devoured half of it, and his head drooped with narcotic pleasure. Then he snapped upright and gave a eureka cry.

  “Receipt!”

  He tore the Burger King bag apart, French fries flying everywhere.

  “Receipt … c’mon, receipt!”

  But there was none. He snatched up the drugstore bag and shook it upside down. The bottle of Advil fell out, and behind it came a small white slip of paper, drifting slowly toward the floor. Ezra snatched the receipt out of the air and scanned the printed data.

  “Yes!”

  He lunged for the desk.

  * * *

  The counter guy started soaking up the mess with a cloth.

  “I said leave, didn’t I?”

  “Give me a break, man,” said Harry. “Five minutes. That’s all I need. She won’t do it again.”

  “Leave.”

  “Three minutes.”

  “Now,” the counter guy said, and to put an exclamation on the command, he sent a pointed finger down toward the laptop’s power button. Harry’s hand closed around the guy’s forearm and stopped him. He knew he was a clenched fist from disaster.

  The counter guy stared at him open-mouthed. “Let go of my arm or I’ll call the cops.”

  “Let me send one more IM, man,” Harry said. “One more.”

  “Just get the hell out of here—and take Miss Jingle Bells with you.”

  The guy was practically yelling now, but his words were punctuated by a cheerful ding, as another message appeared on the laptop.

  GGGG: im near la vida discount drugs at 1474 amsterdam!

  Harry reached for the keyboard, but now the counter guy’s finger found its mark and landed on the power button. The screen went black.

  “Out! Both of you!”

  Harry took Lily’s hand and pulled her off the stool. They started for the door, the hobbled leading the helpless. But Harry was elated; he had an address, a place to go.

  * * *

  Ezra stood at Geiger’s desk, reading the IM’s new declaration.

  STICKLER has signed off and cannot receive

  messages offline.

  He retrieved the half-eaten burger and sat down again. The cat came by and curled up in his lap. Ezra fed himself with one hand, stroked the cat with the other, and refused to cry.

  15

  Mitch’s coffee was cold. He drank coffee day and night, but he hated it cold. When the heat was gone, something happened to the milk and three sugars that left a coating on his tongue, making him scrape it back and forth against the edges of his front teeth.

  He poured the coffee out the window and checked the trace locator. Boddicker and his sister were still in the diner, setting a record for the world’s longest breakfast. Or maybe Boddicker was spiking his coffee and getting an early start on happy hour. From the look of him, he’d taken a few hits when he’d gotten into the ring with Ray.

  Years ago, when Ray had first come aboard, Mitch had sized him in five minutes: big dick, tiny brain, no rearview mirror whatsoever. If you cracked his skull open you’d find IRREGULAR stamped on his frontal lobe. But Mitch had no problem with Ray—the guy had the instincts of a fart, but he knew how to do what he had to do.

  Though Mitch trusted his read on Ray, he still found Hall baffling after all these years. Mitch looked at life as a game of football, X’s and O’s on a chalkboard, and he read people’s actions the same way an offensive or defensive coordinator tries to decipher and react to the other team’s schemes. With Hall, the X’s and O’s said one thing, but they didn’t always tell the truth. As often as not, the whys of Hall’s behavior and decisions completely eluded him.

  Hall was not the sum of his parts. He was far from a tight-ass, but he dressed like one, button-down head to toe. He told a great joke, but rarely laughed at anyone else’s. He usually went by the book, but he showed obvious contempt for it. He always had your back, but he clearly resented having to watch it. And he was very good at his job but seemed to dislike doing it. Hall was the anti-Ray, and to Mitch that meant he couldn’t be trusted.

  Mitch reached into a knapsack on the floor, took out a Nitro-Tech protein bar, and started to nibble. He never went anywhere without his Nitros. In his business you could never count on getting a meal, and who knew what’d be in it when you did? There was too much shit in the world—in the food, the water, the papers, the movies, people’s bodies and heads. Mitch worked hard to eat right and stay lean. Half a dozen times a day he’d grab a pinch of flesh at his waist with his thumb and forefinger just to see if he was getting soft.

  Now he wished he hadn’t tossed his coffee. The Nitros went down a lot easier with it, and sticky nuggets were clinging to the walls of his throat. Mitch could see a food cart on the corner at Columbus Avenue. If he walked over to it, he was almo
st certain that no one looking out the diner’s windows would have a line of sight to him. He had to have something to drink. He eyed the dot on the tracer’s grid, got out of the cab, and headed for the corner. With a glance across the street at the diner’s sun-glazed windows, he racewalked for a few steps and arrived at the food cart. The swarthy proprietor’s dense beard and forehead glistened with sweat from the steam billowing up from some cooking apparatus. Mitch took up a position where the cart hid him from the diner’s vantage point.

  “Bottle of water,” he said.

  “Got no water today, mehster. They scroot me at pehkup place.”

  Mitch nodded. The i’s coming out like eh’s meant Mideastern. A Ranee, or Rocky, or a Leb. Maybe even an Izzy. Not that it made any real difference.

  “Tough work, huh?” said Mitch.

  “S’okay. Back home, they scroot you worse. ’Bout everytheng.”

  “Yeah? Where’s home?”

  “Damascus.”

  Mitch nodded again. He liked being right. “Gimme a Red Bull.”

  “Yes, sehr—one Red Bull.”

  He dug his hand down into an ice-filled drum and came out with a can of Red Bull. Mitch paid him, popped the can, and took a sip. He had a decent view of the diner’s interior. He could see about three-quarters of the booths and tables and their denizens—but he couldn’t see Boddicker or his crazy sister, and now it wasn’t the Red Bull’s megadose of caffeine that was starting to pump up his pulse. He was getting that tight pinch of stress in his temples.

  He glanced at a minivan parked across the intersection, directly in front of the diner. A delivery truck was coming across Columbus; Mitch used it as cover as it passed by and hustled across the street. Peering through the minivan’s windows, he could see straight into the diner without being seen himself.

  “Fuck me,” he said. He pulled out his cell phone and punched two buttons. There was an answer halfway through the first ring.

  “Yeah?” It was Hall.

  “They’re loose,” Mitch said.

  The silence on Hall’s end was potent. Then: “How long?”

  Mitch’s cheeks crimped in a wince. “Don’t know.”

  “Three questions,” Hall said, “just so we’re on the same page.”

  Mitch knew that the three questions would actually be statements, each meant to clarify the parameters of a negative situation. But, in classic Hall fashion, the questions would also be designed to point out that Mitch had screwed up and was, in truth, an idiot unworthy of the continued inhalation of oxygen.

  “One,” Hall said. “Targets were in a diner having breakfast?”

  “Right.”

  “Two. You were parked outside, watching the trace?”

  “Right.”

  “Three. Then how did they walk?”

  “I dunno,” Mitch barked. “The trace has them right fucking here!”

  Hall’s voice shifted into low gear and became a purr. “Mitch, where are you?”

  “On the corner of Seventy-sixth and Columbus, standing in front of the diner.”

  “I thought you were in the car with the trace.”

  “I just came out to get a fucking Red Bull! I’ve been out of the car for two minutes and I never took my eye off the diner.”

  Mitch’s cell phone screen might as well have had a video feed. He could see Hall sitting behind the wheel, tapping it with a finger. He was probably smoking a cigarette, the butt locked in his scowl. Ray would be beside him, listening, exchanging looks.

  “Go back to the car,” Hall said, “and check the trace.”

  “I’m on it,” Mitch said, and started away in a jog, cursing Hall’s dark heart. The only thing he hated more than feeling clueless was sounding that way. He slid into the front seat and checked the locator’s display.

  “It’s still dead on,” he said to Hall. “Sonofabitch might as well be sitting in my lap. I don’t get it.”

  “Go in the diner, ask a question or two, then call me back.”

  “Where are you guys?”

  “West Side, the One thirties.”

  “Any more hits on the kid’s cell?”

  “No.”

  “On Boddicker’s?”

  “No.”

  “The kid’s mother?”

  “No.”

  The line went dead.

  “Fuck you,” Mitch muttered. “And fuck each and every one of us.”

  * * *

  Rita saw the red hair and the mustache as soon as the cab driver came to the door. She strolled over as Mitch stepped inside.

  “Sit wherever you like, hon.”

  “Thanks, but I’m just looking for somebody.”

  Rita noted the good ol’ boy drawl and watched him scan every corner of the place.

  The cabbie turned back to her. “I let a guy and a gal off here a while ago, and I think he dropped some money in the back when he paid me. Two twenties.”

  “Jesus,” Rita said, “an honest cabbie.” She gave him a grin. Mitch returned it with an “aw, shucks” shrug. She prayed she wasn’t overdoing it.

  “He’s maybe forty or so. Thin, kinda washed out. And the gal was dressed in purple—kinda odd.” He tapped his forehead.

  Rita’s heart was tap-dancing. She put her hands behind her back because she wasn’t sure if they were shaking. There was something genuinely sinister coming off the guy.

  “Hmmm,” she said, pausing. “No, I don’t think I saw them. Must be your lucky day.”

  She forced herself to meet his stare. She had no idea how she was coming off, and the guy’s expression wasn’t giving her a hint.

  “Well,” he said, “guess you’re right. Okay if I use the head?”

  “Sure, hon.”

  She poked a thumb over her shoulder and held her smile in place as he walked away. She felt a little light-headed from the adrenaline buzz. She let a few seconds pass and then glanced back. The guy had gone into the hallway, out of sight.

  * * *

  Mitch stood in front of a door with a big Hollywood-type star and the name Angelina painted above it. He gave it a double rap, then turned the knob and opened it enough to stick his head in. Unoccupied. He moved down to the door with a star and Brad on it, put an ear to it, then walked inside. Someone had left the water running in the sink. He crouched down to peek under the door of the stall. It was empty. He turned the faucet off and looked in the mirror. He was sure the waitress was lying, but it didn’t matter—Boddicker was gone. The guy was sharp. He’d trumped Hall and Ray, and now he had Mitch standing in a bathroom staring at himself.

  Mitch went back out to the hall and saw what he was looking for—a back door—and stepped into the alley. A copper-skinned dishwasher was leaning against the wall having a smoke, his dark eyes empty of interest.

  “Ha visto un hombre y una mujer vestidos de morado salir de aquí?” Mitch asked.

  The dishwasher shook his head, and Mitch headed across the street for the cab. Boddicker had made him and played him—and Mitch didn’t know how.

  * * *

  When his cell rang, Hall pulled over on Amsterdam. The back of his head and his sternum ached, the wolfed-down Egg McMuffin shifted at the bottom of his stomach like a shipwreck on the ocean floor, and he was furious—not at Mitch, not at Ray, but at himself. He’d thought his prep for this job had been impeccable. He’d followed Worst-Case Scenario six ways from Sunday, but he’d misread everyone:

  Matheson, for being cold enough to run and leave his son behind.

  Boddicker, for being a lot more than the sad sack he looked like. When they’d first met, Hall hadn’t felt a thing coming off the guy, and now he’d chumped them twice.

  And Geiger, for having a genuine soft spot.

  He answered the call. “Yeah?”

  “They’re long gone,” said Mitch. “So where do you want me now?”

  Hall glanced at Ray, who was fishing an orange plastic pill container out of his pocket.

  “C’mon up here. We’re at One thirty-t
hird and Amsterdam.”

  “On my way.”

  Hall sank back into his seat. If the three of them ended up sharing a toilet for the rest of their lives—or just got disappeared if the wrong guys found them first—it would be on him. His biggest mistake had been misjudging Geiger. Hall had originally settled on Dalton for the job—the man was a psycho, but what you saw was always what you got—but to his surprise the image of a boy strapped to a chair spitting blood from a mouth that had one lip missing had made him change his mind. Now it occurred to him that, at least in one way, he and Geiger might have something in common—and that in the end, this weakness could put the dagger in both their backs.

  Hall turned to watch Ray jiggle two pills into his palm and bring his hand up to his horror-movie mouth. A groan and wince followed immediately. Ray’s brain was telling his jaw to open, but his muscles were balking in protest because the task was too painful. Ray stared at the pills and then looked over at Hall. Words leaked out of his lips like soup too hot to swallow.

  “Help … me … out,” he said, and his free hand pointed at his grisly mouth.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Hall said, shaking his head.

  Ray’s swollen, purple-circled eyes narrowed into slits. He looked like a huge, angry raccoon.

  Hall snatched the pills from his partner’s hand, grabbed Ray’s jaw, and yanked it open. An ursine growl came out of the open maw. Hall shoved the pills into Ray’s mouth and pushed his jaw shut.

  Closing his eyes, Ray swallowed. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  16

  When the pain first came, Geiger’s mind shut down like an engine sensing overload. Time stopped. The world, the universe, ceased to exist. There was only nothing. Then the void was filled with a visitation from the past. It was not so much an act of memory as an encounter in the present. His mind straddled then and now.

  * * *

  His father, holding a candle, led him to a door. He had finished building the space that day. He swung the door open: the room, if it could be called that, was four feet square.