by Toby Ball
Frings shook his head.
“I expect not. In the end, most of the rooms were bare. When his father died, Will was left with essentially nothing.”
“That house that he lives in now—”
“The one by the Tech?”
“That one. Do you know how he acquired it?”
Birchall shook his head. “No.”
“From talking to you, it seems like he probably couldn’t afford to buy it. Is it lent to him?”
Birchall shrugged. “I honestly do not know. It’s not really something that I’ve ever given much thought.”
At this, Frings nodded slowly, things starting to clarify in his mind.
72
GRIP HAD RIPPED APART A BLANKET FROM THE WHITE RHINO AND SHOVED the ragged strips into the arms of his shirt. Despite this precaution, the wind cut through his overcoat, chilling him to the bone. He jiggled his knees and hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to generate a little more warmth. Albertsson stood next to him, in the near-black shadow of a brick column holding up a pedestrian bridge. They were in L’Ouverture Park, several wooded acres cut into the neighborhoods of grim row houses that lay just south of the Tech campus. Christ, he was cold.
“The guy”—Albertsson said—“thinks that we use some kind of spy rules. He stashes his envelope in the hole in this tree down the way, and then he marks that sign that you see there before the bend.” A sign listing the park prohibitions—alcohol consumption, unleashed dogs, motorized vehicles—was suspended maybe four feet off the ground by a metal pole. A magenta moon lit the area like a stage set. The brightness made the shaded spots seem even darker, providing that much better concealment.
Albertsson kept talking out of the side of his mouth, keeping his voice at a confidential level, though Grip didn’t think that anyone would be able to hear them over the noise of the wind. “It’s all bullshit, though, the spy stuff. I just stand here and watch him go through the motions. He thinks he’s being tricky, you know, keeping to the edge of the walk because he thinks the trees provide him cover, checking over his shoulder, moving quick when he makes the drop. I just stay here; let him do his thing if it makes him feel safer or whatnot. Then when he’s gone, I go get the letter and wipe off the mark.”
“Who is he?”
Albertsson shrugged. His coat had a fur collar. He looked warm. Grip considered punching him out and taking his coat.
“I’ve never met him, so far’s I know. Never even got a close look. But it really doesn’t matter, anyway. I just pass the note on. Never even looked at one.”
Grip shook his head at Albertsson’s lack of curiosity. They waited in silence, Grip hoping that it wouldn’t take too long or, worse yet, “Your guy ever not show?”
“Nah, he always makes it. Guy gets a taste of the money? He’ll be here on time.”
Fifteen minutes passed. Grip had fought in World War II in Europe, where he’d developed the survival skill of spotting motion against a static background. He saw something now, up the hill to their right. He nudged Albertsson, nodded to the hill and what he could now see was a man picking his way along the heavily wooded slope.
“That your guy?”
Albertsson shook his head. “My guy just walks the path.”
Grip watched the figure making his away along the slope, a dozen or so feet above a path that cut through the middle of the hill, a switchback connected to the path that they watched below them. The man stopped at a spot about a hundred yards off.
“Here he comes,” Albertsson said. Grip followed Albertsson’s eyes, saw a man walking on the path below.
Grip looked back up the slope to where his man leaned against a tree, invisible to the second man below them. Lit dark red, the scene seemed almost unreal to Grip, like a photo that hadn’t been properly developed.
“So this is the way you always do it? You don’t change it up?”
“Far’s I know, this is the only way. Why?”
Grip didn’t answer, thinking that Albertsson’s superiors must not have been very concerned about security. This arrangement seemed more about making the snitch comfortable, or maybe making things exciting for him. Grip looked back up the hill, picked out the silhouette of the man leaning against the tree, waiting.
Grip’s plan had been to follow Albertsson’s source. He abandoned it. “You stay here.”
“What?” Albertsson said, the rest of the sentence carried away on the wind as Grip made his way up the hill toward the switchback, legs stiff from standing in the cold. He stayed just off the path, where the trees gave him some cover as he headed for the figure in the woods.
He edged his way to the left, out of the man in the woods’ sight line, so that he might be able to cross the exposed path unseen. He looked back down the hill, saw the snitch still walking along the lower path, a couple hundred yards from the drop spot. Grip looked to where he knew Albertsson was standing, but the darkness was impenetrable. Back up the hill, it seemed as if the man had also seen the snitch on the path and was slowly making his way down the hill.
Grip pulled his gun. No more time to wait. He jogged across the path and into the trees on the upper slope. He’d lost sight of the man as he’d crossed and now he scanned the woods before him, trying to pick him out. No success. It occurred to Grip that the man might now be hiding from him, might have seen him when he crossed the path. Grip realized he could wait the man out, let the snitch make the drop, figure out what to do from there. All of this would be much easier if he could hear above the wind.
Seconds passed. He saw movement in front of him. The man must have been getting antsy about the time. Grip ran forward, relying on the wind to cover the sound of his footsteps. But the man either heard Grip or saw him coming because he stopped, and Grip saw the gun in his hand, reflecting the red moonlight.
A muzzle flash sent Grip sprawling to the ground, banging his left elbow on a rock. He fired two shots from the ground in return. The man turned, ran up the hill. Grip took off after him, the running difficult as he strode over roots, dodging trees and bushes.
His thighs burned from the uphill effort, breath thundered in his ears. The chase felt all wrong. The scene before him, lit by the red moon, came to him as if through tinted glasses. It was both too loud and too quiet, the wind drowning out the city sounds—sirens, car horns, pile drivers—but he could still hear his breath, the crunch of the ground under his feet.
Grip slowly closed on the man, who hadn’t looked back since the chase began, and he was within twenty yards when the man crested the hill, turned, and fired twice in Grip’s direction. Grip hit the ground again, watched the man disappear beyond the crest, then scrambled back to his feet and kept going. He reached the top, scanned the empty road, saw the man to his right, a gun in his extended hand. Four pops. How many shots had the guy fired, total? The guy wasn’t a pro, couldn’t shoot for shit. He was running again, toward the park entrance.
Grip’s legs were heavy as he rejoined the pursuit. The skyline rose as a purple silhouette, tentacles of smoke reaching upward in a couple of spots. Sweat flowed, the blanket strips in his shirt now damp. He felt himself slowing, his legs refusing to move faster. He paused, trying to sight the man with his pistol, but his gasping breaths and pounding heart made it impossible to steady his hand. He forced himself to run again, having lost a dozen yards in the interim.
The man ran out the park entrance with Grip now fifty yards behind. He set his jaw against the burning in his legs, sure that this man was the key to whatever the fuck was going on. Traffic on de Gama was sparse. Grip paused, hands on knees, gulping air. The light to his right turned red. Grip saw the man run to the driver’s door of a stopped car, gun pointed at the window. Grip ran for the car. He needed ten seconds. The door opened. The man pulled a woman from the car, pushed her away and climbed in himself. Twenty-five yards away. The car moved, blowing through the red light, no traffic to contend with. Shit.
Grip stopped in the middle of the street, holding his gun out
with both hands. “Get down,” he yelled at the woman who watched, dazed, as her car roared away, blocking Grip’s shot.
“Get the fuck down.” The woman finally dropped to the pavement, and Grip emptied his clip in the direction of the car. The car kept going. Grip heard honking as a car approached from behind. He turned, pointed his gun at the car. The driver accelerated around him. Grip tracked the car with his gun, caught a glimpse of the driver’s startled face, thought that his best chance might have just slipped away.
73
FRINGS SMOKED A REEFER BY THE WINDOW IN HIS BEDROOM, BLOWING smoke through the narrow crack between frame and sill. From where he sat, the sun was just emerging orange over the buildings to the east. He’d gone to bed early the previous night, wanting to get a jump on the day. He didn’t have a sense of Ebanks’s current drug habits beyond the sheer volume he seemed to be ingesting, but figured that mid-morning was probably the best bet for finding him in some semblance of sobriety. So, he was up, drinking coffee, feeling the morning’s edge leave him. He needed to be Ebanks’s friend, not his adversary.
He took a cab, browsed the racing results and the obits as the hack accelerated and braked, feinted and dodged. They drove the perimeter of the Tech, the hack now distracted by the co-eds walking on the sidewalk, muttering back to Frings in an accent that Frings couldn’t quite figure out. Frings got out at Ebanks’s house.
He tried the door, but it was locked. He knocked. A kid answered, probably from the Tech—tousled brown hair, white button-down.
“Who’re you?” the kid asked.
“I’m Frank Frings, I’m here—”
The kid stepped aside to let Frings in.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Frings.”
Frings had to shift his cane to his left hand to shake.
A collection of college-age kids hung out in the foyer, smoking any number of things. Frings noticed that unlike on his last visit, when they had seemed to fill the entire space, these kids had congregated off to the side, away from the stairs leading up to Ebanks’s apartment.
“Will’s upstairs,” the kid said, glancing nervously at Blaine, who sat in an upholstered chair directly in front of the stairs, head lolling slightly to the side.
Frings walked over and found Blaine slumped over, heavy-lidded, his hand resting on a pistol balanced on his thigh. His hair fell lankly to his collar; the skin of his face was drawn tight with fatigue.
“What’s your business?” Blaine muttered.
“I’m Frank Frings.”
“I know who the fuck you are. I want to know what you want.” Frings didn’t like the way he sounded or the look in his eyes. Mostly, though, he didn’t like the gun. It was unnecessary and all the more menacing for it.
“I need to talk to Will.”
“Nobody’s talking to Will.”
Frings nodded. “I need to talk to him anyway. This is important. For him.”
Blaine wobbled the gun a little with his fingers.
“Listen,” Frings said, “you know Will and I are friends, right? You know that. Let me just write him a message on a piece of paper. You bring it up to him, let him decide if he wants to see me.”
Blaine had fully grasped the gun, but his demeanor seemed less aggressive—perhaps he’d decided that the gun’s implied threat was enough. Blaine thought for a moment. Frings took advantage of his hesitation, opening his jacket.
“I’ve got a notebook and pen in here. I’m going to get them out.”
Blaine raised his gun a little but nodded. Frings took out the pad and wrote: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT ANDERS V. He folded the paper into quarters and handed it to Blaine.
“I’ll wait here.”
He watched the younger man lope up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
FRINGS HADN’T NOTICED CURTAINS THE FIRST TIME HE’D BEEN IN EBANKS’S sitting room, but they were drawn now. The shades had been removed from the lamps so that a harsh artificial light illuminated even the corners. Ebanks reclined in a plush chair wearing white linen pants and a white cotton shirt unbuttoned nearly to his navel. His hair was disheveled, his eyes lacked their usual shine.
Blaine hung around by the door, wanting to stay in the room, but Ebanks curtly dismissed him. Blaine gave Ebanks a long look.
“I’ve known Frank much longer than I’ve known you Blaine, now get the fuck out of here.”
Blaine left, but Frings didn’t relish running into him on the way out.
“Everyone’s wearing white for Ben,” Ebanks said, his whisper a contrast to the sharp tone he’d used with Blaine. “It’s the color of Hindu mourning. They decided this was the best thing to do.”
Frings sat down. “You read my note?”
Ebanks nodded. “We need to figure this out.”
“When did you start taking money from Ving?”
He put this out there as if it were an established fact, though it was only a guess—a well-informed one. Ving had run Linsky. If he was trying to keep tabs on the radicals, Ebanks was another obvious soruce.
Ebanks grimaced. “No point in denying it, right?”
Frings shook his head.
“Okay”—Ebanks sat straighter, trying to project confidence where there was none—“1960, when I got run out of the Tech.”
“Why?”
“Why’d I take it? I’m not going to pretend that taking his money is high-minded or principled, but what we are doing here is vital, maybe the most important endeavor since the invention of the wheel or the time of Jesus Christ. Does that sound crazy to you? Grandiose? Do I have delusions of grandeur for saying these things?”
Frings raised his eyebrows.
Ebanks laughed cynically. “I suppose I do. But have you taken the drug, Frank? You can’t understand it until you’ve taken the drug. Earlier this year, Dr. Mowbray Alden came to visit me. You know that name?”
“British academic, expert in Buddhism and Eastern religions.”
“Yes, that’s the one. But also something more than a dabbler in mysticism. He’s studied for decades, undertaken the most ambitious and advanced Eastern spiritual regimen that any Westerner has attempted with the possible exception of Sir Richard Burton. But he’d heard about the drug from a friend here at the Tech, and he came to see me to give it a try. Not Ledley, me. We took the drug together. He wanted to take quite a bit because he felt that his spiritual training had prepared him for the experience, and who knows, maybe it did.
“Frank, I can’t even begin to explain to you what happened that night, but when we had breakfast two days later, the old man wept. Wept. He said that he’d spent his entire life searching for the experience that I’d handed to him in a sugar cube. You think I should give up this work because some small-minded assholes at the Tech don’t want me around?” His voice had risen in volume. He wriggled up in his chair.
Frings showed Ebanks his palms. “I’m not criticizing you at all, Will. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. They kicked you out of the Tech and then what? Anders Ving comes to you with a proposition?”
“You want a drink, Frank?”
Everyone was offering him drinks lately. “I’m alright.”
Ebanks stood and walked behind a low bar. He still moved like a loose-limbed kid, part of his aura of youth. Frings waited while Ebanks played with ice and a couple of bottles. He came back with two highball glasses containing ice and a clear liquid. He put one of them on the end table by Frings’s chair.
“I didn’t want one.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“It’s barely ten in the morning.”
Ebanks smiled, a gesture that seemed almost a reflex. “I guess that’s right.”
Frings didn’t want the conversation to get sidetracked. “You know that Ving works for Kraatjes, right? Since Kraatjes became chief?”
Ebanks nodded. “What’s the point of this, Frank? Are you going to write an article?”
“Of course not, Will. Do you remember Panos, my editor
back at the Gazette?”
Ebanks was sipping his drink. He nodded slightly.
“His grandson was missing and I was looking for him and all this came up—Ben Linsky, you, Ving, Kollectiv 61. I’m trying to figure out how it all fits together.”
“Linsky?”
Frings nodded.
Ebanks closed his eyes in thought. “Who’s Panos’s grandson?”
“Sol Elia.” He’d told him that before.
Ebanks nodded.
“You know him, don’t you?”
Ebanks conceded that he did.
“You told me before that you didn’t.”
“Not well, Frank. Not well. And I want nothing to do with him or anything connected to him. Yes, he’s been here a few times, to see friends of his. He’s a radical, but he doesn’t really fit in with the heemies. He’s got a pretty violent vibe.”
“Does he?”
“He does, Frank. Trust me.”
“Is he in Kollectiv 61?”
“That is a complicated question. What the hell is Kollectiv 61 do you think, Frank? I don’t know what it is. Is it something people spray-paint on walls when they go out and bust up a building site? Is it a secret society—terrorists blowing things up? Is it one guy? Five? Fifty? I don’t know.”
“I get your point,” Frings said, thinking about what Sol had said—that Kollectiv 61 was just a slogan, an idea—and eager to calm Ebanks down, get him back to talking about Ving. “When Linsky was murdered, someone spray-painted snitch on his wall. Now that I find out that you have been taking money from Ving as well, I think this is something that we should talk about.”
“What, so you can protect me?”
“Don’t be an ass, Will. Something is going on here. Did you know that Linsky was one of Ving’s snitches before he was killed?”
Ebanks shook his head.
“Do you know who else is on Ving’s payroll?”
“No.”
“Okay. So tell me how it happened. You got run out of the Tech. Then what?”