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The Serialist

Page 23

by David Gordon


  “Time travel as a way to save Earth? By God, it just might work.”

  “Unfortunately, the ipod only holds us two, and the engine is weak,” I said, while Poly checked the systems.

  “But we can manage a short hop,” she said. “Maybe fifty years. Back to your 2009.”

  “Ah, old zero-nine,” Beamish said. “If only we knew then what we know now.”

  “But you will,” I said. “We’ll find you in that place you mentioned studying at, the Universe of Harvard? We’ll tell the young you what’s happened. You’ll have another chance to get it right. We all will.”

  “But what about you two?” he asked.

  “We will be stranded in 2009, without the power to leave,” I said.

  “But then you might be doomed,” Beamish cautioned. “Doomed to live and die in the present.”

  “Just like you,” I said. “And everyone else.” I secretly squeezed Poly’s hand.

  “The present will be time enough,” she said, looking out at the night. She gazed at the beautiful, empty spaces we’d crossed and the dead stars from whence we came. “It has to be. It’s all there is.”

  PART FOUR

  May 18–21, 2009

  69

  If this were a classic detective story, a procedural, it would end right here, as soon as the killer was caught, the crimes explained, the final victims counted. But I’m no classic detective and my own story has one more twist still to come.

  To be honest, I prefer the old-fashioned mysteries myself, with a dead murderer on the last page and no mushy stuff about the hero’s private life. I always see it as a sign of decline in a series, and desperation in the writer, when a detective suddenly grows a tumor or terrorists kidnap his wife. It’s unprofessional. I say, Don’t bug us with your personal problems. Just do your job. In his first novels, Dashiell Hammett, the headmaster of the old school himself, didn’t even bother naming his detective. The narrator was just a short, fat guy with a gun and a hat who smoked too many Fatimas. He came to town in a crumpled suit, solved his case, and caught the next train out.

  But unlike the characters in the stories I read or write, it seems I’m destined to live one in which, every time I’m ready to fold down the page and toddle off to sleep, fate slips me one more surprise. Perhaps you’re way ahead of me and already have it figured out. After all, the clues are right there, if you can see them. But I never do.

  So, the next morning, I went downtown to the FBI offices to sign my official statement. I had not been to the Federal Building in, well, I couldn’t remember how long, and the feeling was, I guess, very post-post-9/11: there were concrete barriers and extra cops, and at the same time a feeling of everydayness, as if this new fear had simply been integrated into the other old fears and become the new normal, suppressed and forgotten, as it must be, if daily life is to go on. For example, I walk by Ground Zero all the time now, without registering it as anything but one more construction site. On the other hand, I remember, not long ago, walking through Little Italy, or I guess it’s now Nolita, while the trash of the San Gennaro street fair was being swept up. Suddenly, and for no reason I knew, I felt such a wave of mysterious sadness that tears welled up in my throat. As a city kid, walking on holidays down the middle of the litter-strewn street had always been a special pleasure. Not anymore. Ever since that beautifully clear September morning, empty streets full of blowing paper fill me with secret grief.

  I went through the metal detector and got a visitor’s pass from the desk, then waited till Agent Terence appeared to escort me up in the elevator. We shook hands warmly and I thanked him again. He blushed. We were genuinely glad to see each other, which was lucky, because as soon as we stepped off the elevator, I was pretty much attacked by John Toner.

  “You,” he said, getting up from the couch where he was sitting, across from the receptionist and the wood-paneled wall with the big FBI seal. A thin blond woman with large boobs put a calming hand on his arm, but he brushed her off. The second Mrs. Toner.

  “What the fuck have you done?” he yelled. “Didn’t I tell you?” Receptionists stopped talking into their headphones and agents walking by with files turned to look.

  “Mr. Toner,” I said, quietly.

  “Didn’t I fucking tell you?” He took a swing at me, and I jumped back, but the blow was halfhearted and Terence neatly interceded, grabbing his arm and gently pushing him back.

  “Please, sir, please,” he said, with real pleading in his young voice. Mrs. Toner hurried over and began pulling her husband away.

  “Don’t you care?” he asked me over his shoulder. “Don’t you even care how you affect people? You’re a bloodsucker. You live off pain.” Tears ran down his cheeks. He sniffed, touching his face, as if suddenly noticing that it was wet. Then he fell silent and let his wife guide him back to his seat. Terence quickly steered me to the glass door that led to the offices.

  “Vampires,” he said, as he walked me down the hall. “That’s what James Gandolfini said too, you know. I read it in an interview.”

  “Who?”

  “Tony Soprano. The actor who played him?”

  “Right.”

  “He said writers are vampires who suck the life out of people. He said it about the guy who wrote the show.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s really fascinating.”

  “This is it,” Terence said, and rapped his knuckles on a door before opening it.

  “Harry, good,” Townes said. He was standing behind his desk, sorting through big piles of paper. “Sit down. How’s the arm?”

  “Fine,” I said, “thanks,” and sat.

  “Good,” he said without looking up, and waved vaguely at the desk. “There’s a copy of the statement you gave at the hospital. Read and sign.”

  I did, while Townes flipped through files and Terence stood and watched.

  “Toner’s still out there,” Terence told him. “He took a swing at Mr. Bloch.”

  Townes glanced up at me.

  “It was nothing,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”

  Townes didn’t smile. He looked back down at his work and started turning pages. “Poor guy,” he said. “He has his lawyer filing all kinds of shit. At this point he’s probably just bogging things down, but you can’t blame him. If Flosky helps Clay get a new trial, it will be like having his wife dug up all over again.”

  I signed the statement and handed it to Townes, who gave it to Terence, who left, shutting the door softly behind him. Finally Townes sat. He took off his glasses and leaned back, rubbing his nose.

  “Did you sleep?” he asked me. We had to position our heads between stacks of files to see each other.

  I shrugged. “A little.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “I don’t remember,” I lied.

  “Keep the lights on?”

  “TV.”

  “You keep seeing it, don’t you?” he asked, craning forward over the desk.

  “Yes.”

  He blinked at me several times. He nodded. “Well, it doesn’t go away. I wish it did. You get used to it.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a big manila envelope. He laid it on the desk. It was old and worn, with coffee circles and tape along the seams.

  “I don’t know if you want to see this or not. But I wanted you to know that I know what it’s like.”

  I opened the flap, and as soon as I saw the white edge of the photo paper, I understood that these were the original pictures, the ones Clay took and sent to the cops.

  Townes spoke. “More than twelve years ago, I saw those girls, for real I mean, those bodies. And then the photos that fucker sent. And I probably still see them, at least for a second, every day, or maybe now it’s every other day. Or maybe I won’t think about it for a while, a few weeks even, and then I’ll see something—a billboard, a woman on the street—and it will all come back. Or I’ll be on the subway or passing by a flower shop, and I’ll smell that smell. You know what I mean.”

  I did. �
��Death.”

  “Death and rotting flesh. That sick, sweet, bitter smell. It’s in my nose now, and my head. I suppose that’s why I hang on to those pictures. I keep them here so my family doesn’t see. And even here I hide them, because they wouldn’t understand why, every now and then, I have to look. But you do, I think. Understand.” He stopped talking and stared at me and the look in his eyes was plaintive, almost beseeching. He was, I realized, begging.

  “I do,” I said. “I understand.” I looked. The stack was thick. On top were the normal photos, the conventionally arty shots that he’d taken in his studio and that had been seized during the investigation. Mostly they were proofs, sheets of small squares featuring pretty girls in typical poses, the only pathos added by hindsight, the fact that I knew what they could not: I was looking at the dead, and seeing them through the eye of their killer. Then at the bottom were the other shots, the ones sent in to the police.

  They were beautiful, at first glance, pale forms like giant flowers. Then you realized, these sculptures were made out of girls. A girl reshaped to look like a blossom, hands and feet and hair radiating out, her face in the center. A girl turned into a chair. A girl with her head emerging between her legs, so that she appeared to be giving birth to herself. A girl sawed in half and laid arm in arm, like she was hugging herself, kissing her own twin.

  70

  I left the Federal Building in a fog. I spun through the revolving door and crossed the plaza and was trying to remember where the subway was when a cab stopped before me at the curb. Theresa Trio emerged with a cardboard box and a stack of files in her arms. When she saw me, she jumped and dropped her stuff.

  “My God, it’s you.”

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, and bent to help. “Sorry I scared you.”

  “No.” She laughed awkwardly. “You just startled me.”

  She was in her lawyer look, a fitted knee-length black skirt and a cropped jacket, but her nail polish was chipped and bitten and there were rings under her eyes. She picked a folder up backward and the papers spilled out.

  “Shit.” She sighed. I grabbed them up for her.

  “Why are you here anyway?” I asked.

  “To answer more questions. They just finally let me into the office for my things. Being there gives me the creeps. I guess that’s why I’m jumpy.” Her laugh was hollow.

  “Let’s sit a minute.” I pointed out a bench under a bus shelter. We sat side by side with her belongings piled between us, watching the traffic flow past. At first I thought she would cry, from the way her breathing fluttered. Instead she took out a cigarette. The flame on her lighter was much too high and she jumped back as it flared.

  “Hey, watch it.”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” She sucked at her blackened Marlboro Light.

  “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s dangerous.”

  “I know. It’s gross. I don’t really, but . . .” She shrugged and puffed, mightily. The huge ash fell on her skirt, and for a second she reminded me of Flosky. “I keep thinking about how much time I spent alone with her. In the office late at night. We even shared a room upstate at the hotel a couple times. God.” She shook her shoulders. “She killed girls my age. What am I saying? She tried to kill you.”

  Reflexively, I touched the bandage under my jacket. “You know, I’ve been remembering our conversation on the train. About capital punishment and what was civilized?”

  She nodded.

  “I guess you might think badly of me,” I said. “But I have to admit, if I’d had the gun in my hand, I think I would have killed her without a second thought.” I glanced over at her. “I’m sorry.”

  She watched the smoke rising through her hand. Her voice shrank far back to a whisper. “I wish you had killed her too.” She puffed on her cigarette, choked, and threw it in the street. “I guess that makes me a total hypocrite.”

  “It makes you normal. To be scared or angry is human. With Flosky, it wasn’t even personal. I was just this thing that went from being useful to being a problem. And she wasn’t herself either. I mean she wasn’t the person I’d met, wasn’t even there in the room.” I realized Theresa was peering at me closely. “Never mind. I was rambling.”

  I sat back and watched a bus snort by.

  “That’s just like what I keep thinking,” she said. “How you never know who someone really is. To be honest, it even crossed my mind that the killer could be you.” She smiled at this and covered her face. “I can’t believe I just said that.” She peeked up at me, blushing, as if over a veil. I laughed, loudly, a sudden, inappropriate guffaw. She recoiled.

  “Sorry.” I caught my breath. “But I just thought of something. I don’t know if I should tell you. You could ruin me.” For a moment I thought how angry Claire would be, then I remembered she was gone. “Never mind. It’s frivolous. Forget it.”

  “No, come on. Frivolous is good. I could use frivolous, believe me.”

  “OK,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “I am Sibylline Lorindo-Gold.”

  “What?” She smiled faintly. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s me. I’m her. Sort of. She’s my mom. But I wrote the books.”

  She sat back and narrowed her eyes, as if putting me in perspective. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  So I explained, while she watched me suspiciously. She dug into her carton and pulled out my new book. She checked the photo closely, then lifted her glasses and stared at my face. I tried to smile coyly. I batted my eyelids.

  “Jesus,” she said. “I feel nauseous. This is freaking me out.”

  “I thought you’d laugh.”

  “Laugh? Do you know how many times I looked at this picture without knowing what I was seeing?” She put her head between her hands. “I can’t look at you. I keep seeing her. This is definitely not what I needed.”

  “Try to breathe,” I said.

  “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Will you be all right?”

  She didn’t answer. I hesitated, perching as far from her as I could on the bench. Another bus sailed by, its wave of exhaust glittering in the sun. Now my own mind had begun to turn around something she had said. How many times she had looked at the photo. Without knowing what she’d seen.

  “And this means you wrote these books I’ve been reading all this time.” She spoke without looking up.

  “Yes,” I said, but I was only half listening. Something had clicked in my head, like the feeling just before I understand where a book is going. I was answering her by reflex. My brain was writing the next chapter.

  “The crazy thing is, I love your books,” she went on. “Or hers. Whoever.” Then she smiled up at me, makeup smeared, and said the one thing I had waited my whole life to hear. “You are my favorite writer.”

  I stood. “Thanks, but I have to go. I’m so sorry.”

  “What? You’re going? Now?” She looked at me in shock, as if maybe I really was a killer after all.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. Do you need help getting inside? Are you OK?”

  “I don’t know. Just go. Jesus.”

  “Sorry.” I took off running.

  71

  “You’re back,” Townes said, when I rushed into his office, again with Terence as my guide. “You forget something?”

  “Let me see those pictures again.”

  Townes looked at me oddly. I was out of breath and waving my arms around. He probably thought I had snapped.

  “I just thought of something. Please,” I said. “Let me see.”

  He signaled for Terence to leave us, then took out the envelope again.

  “Don’t make me regret showing you these in the first place,” he said, as I clawed open the envelope and spilled the ghastly pictures out. I pushed them aside and got the proofs, the sheets of regular glamour shots taken in Clay’s home. I examined them closely while Townes examined me.


  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Do you have a loupe?”

  He opened another drawer and rooted around while I held the sheets under the desk lamp. This sheet was Dani’s sister, posed in a ballet outfit, and it disturbed me too much, so I flipped to the next one, Janet Hicks. I peered as close as I could, with the sheet right up under the bulb, but it was too small. “Loupe, please,” I said again.

  “OK, I’m looking,” Townes said. He was on his knees, looking in the bottom of the drawer. “Got it.” He hit his head on the open top drawer. “Fuck.” He stood and handed it to me. “Here’s your fucking loupe.”

  “Thanks.” I held the magnifier to my eye and peered intently at Janet Hicks’s pretty face, the pout of a yearning actress. Then I went to the next shot of her, and the next, all along the rows. Then I checked the next girl. The next. I was recalling something Clay had told me about working with his models, about getting them to hold still. Like a hunter, he’d said.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Townes asked.

  “I got him,” I said, and handed him back the sheets. “I think.”

  Townes looked down at the photos that he’d seen a million times, then shrugged and took his seat. “I’m waiting.”

  “As part of my illustrious writing career, the one you perhaps justly mocked me for, I spent a number of years writing and editing porn magazines.”

  “I know. It’s in your file.”

  “I have a file?” I was both frightened and flattered.

  “You were saying?”

  “OK, well, as part of that job I spent countless hours staring at proof sheets like these, at girls like these, and I knew before there was something wrong with them, but I didn’t know what till now. It’s the eyes.”

 

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