by A. C. Fuller
"And you knew you weren't?"
"I did try to tell you that."
"You did."
"I'm just wondering if, when I left, maybe you thought Greta was going to fill it, and if maybe now you're seeing me and thinking again that I'll fill it."
"People are complimentary, Cam. Some people might need each other to fill their blank spaces, to use your pretentious analogy."
"Maybe, but maybe what you need is just to see that it doesn't need filling, that there's something new there. Something not defined by the absence of something else."
What Camila was saying made him deeply uncomfortable. Plus, the drinks were wearing off and he had a lot of meetings planned for the next day. He stepped away from the fence and turned back toward the convention center. "I gotta get some sleep."
14
James sat in a large plush chair in the hotel lobby and dialed Alex's cell. Straight to voice mail.
He thought of trying to find him at the bar, or upstairs, but realized he was probably still with Camila. James didn't think it was likely that anything was going on, but he wasn't sure and didn't trust his instincts when it came to other people's relationships. And besides, he told himself, he could figure things out on his own. He wasn't feeling especially confident, but he could fake it.
When he approached the reception desk, a woman with thick glasses and gray hair looked up from her computer screen. He read her name tag and tried to mimic Alex's brightest voice. "Hello, Agnes, how are you tonight?"
"How can I help you?"
"I'm here to see Denver Bice," he said. "I think it's room 1920, but I can't find the e-mail."
He figured that he'd ask for Bice by name first, then try every company name he could think of under which Bice might be registered, starting with Plutarch Capital.
She raised her glasses and squinted at him. "Are you his son? I'll just need to see ID."
"What? Bice doesn't have a son."
"Hmm. He said his son would be asking for him, probably tonight, and to let him right up."
"What did he say his son's name was?"
"I'm really not able to—"
"Can you tell me what room he is in?"
"No, I'm sorry, sir. The best I can do is connect you with his room from the desk phone. I can't give out room numbers."
"Okay, sure. Thanks."
James was flustered, but he let his feet sink into the floor to steady himself. He took deep breaths to control his stutter as the woman dialed the phone and handed it to him. He didn't sweat as much these days, but even so, the phone slid a little as he pressed it to his cheek. His mind raced as the phone rang. A bead of sweat trickled down his back. He had not thought this through as well as he should have.
He felt his hand move to give Agnes the phone back.
"Hello?" Bice's voice was on the line. Confident, calm, but somehow accusatory at the same time.
"Umm, hello, Mr. B-Bice. This is James. Umm, James Stacy, with News Scoop. I heard that you w-were at this conference and was wondering if I might ask you a f-few questions about the, I mean the—" His throat stuck.
James's heart pounded through a brief silence and his shirt stuck to his clammy back. Agnes stared at him. The phone felt heavy. He turned away from the desk and looked around the lobby, not sure what he was looking for. "Mr. Bice, are you there?"
All he heard on the line was slow breathing.
The sweat was heavy enough now that it dripped down his spine and into the waistband of his pants. "Mr. Bice?"
He was about to hang up, when Bice spoke. "Sure, Mr. Stacy. I'd be happy to be interviewed for your story. I'm in room 2014, the presidential suite, that's in the east tower of the hotel. Come right up."
The phone fell away from James's ear a few inches. The last thing he'd expected was for Bice to agree to see him. He pressed the phone back to his face, but his hand felt weak. "Okay," he said softly. "I'll be right up."
After handing the phone back to Agnes, he tried calling Alex again, and when it went straight to voice mail, he returned to the bar, figuring he'd just speak with him in person. It was nearly 10 p.m., and the bar was crowded with conference attendees letting off steam. The table where he'd left Alex and Camila was empty. For a moment, he considered checking Alex's room, but he was trying to take more initiative and figured he ought to be able to handle an interview with Bice on his own.
Before he knew what he was doing, James found himself walking down the long hallway to the east tower and riding the elevator to the twentieth floor. At the door to the presidential suite, he paused for a moment to gather himself, then knocked.
Bice answered, wearing a black silk robe over gray silk pajamas. James looked over the older man's shoulder into the suite, which appeared to be empty.
"Come in," Bice said.
"Thank you f-for seeing me so late."
Bice led James into the living room area and pointed at a leather love seat. Bice sat opposite him in a chair that matched.
The curtains were open and James peered out across a wide balcony at the lights of downtown Seattle. He swallowed hard. "You understand that I am h-here as a journalist and that we are on the r-r-record?"
Bice smiled. "Of course. I was once a journalist as well."
"Mr. Bice, I—"
"You know, I was surprised when you called. I expected to hear from your colleague."
"Alex?"
Bice nodded.
"He's not available now, but we can set up an interview with him for t-tomorrow."
Bice stood and walked a slow lap around the room. James followed him with his eyes. His nervousness had faded a little, but he was still on guard.
"Let's see how this goes first," Bice said, sitting back down in his chair.
"I have three areas of interest. First, do you have any further comment on the story we ran at News Scoop a little over two years ago, the st-story that accused you of being behind the murders of Macintosh Hollinger, John Martin, and Demarcus Downton?"
"I have only one comment, which is that the story was false and irresponsible, which is why police never even investigated. Your reporter, Alex Vane. He truly is excellent, but he got that one wrong."
James wanted to object, to confront him with the evidence, but he doubted it would do any good. "Next question. What are you doing here at the conference? Since leaving Standard Media as one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, we haven't heard from you."
Bice came up behind James and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the love seat so their heads were only a foot apart. "Oh, I'm just here to learn about the future of the media, like you."
James looked over at him timidly. "Have you heard of Plutarch Capital?"
Bice shot him a cold piercing glare, then walked to a long, narrow table against the wall. It held two lamps and a bowl of fruit. He opened one of the drawers and seemed to reach for something. James watched him and braced inwardly. When Bice turned around, he was wearing a baseball hat. Dark blue, with a torch on the front.
James read the letters: NYU.
"Never heard of Plutarch Capital. What was the third topic, Mr. Stacy?"
"Uhh, I . . . uhh, did you go to NYU?"
James tried to meet Bice's eyes, but the intensity of the man's glare reminded him too much of the people he'd seen on the documentary about religious cults, or even the homeless guy on acid he'd talked to in the park once. In those eyes there was certainty, but it was a fragile certainty. The kind of certainty one had to keep convincing oneself of by sheer force of intensity.
"No," Bice said. "But I am a big fan of their programs and some of their alumni."
"Alex?"
Bice had tucked his ears into the hat, and, as James watched him—in his robe and hat, in a suite that cost fifteen-hundred dollars a night, with those eyes—he knew he had made a mistake. He felt for his phone in his pocket and swallowed hard. "The woman at the front desk asked if I was your s-s-son."
A thin smile had spread across Bice's
face and James glanced nervously around the room. "I have no comment on that," Bice said.
James was sweating all over. He repositioned himself on the loveseat to see if the sweat had soaked through his shirt. His cheeks had grown hot, just like they did in grade school, when all the kids in the class would stare at him as he stuttered through a passage of reading.
The thin smile seemingly frozen on his face, Bice said, "Your third question?"
"Ummm. I . . ."
"Don't worry, Mr. Stacy, I'm here to help."
"I received word from a source that you might be involved in something, umm . . ." He trailed off and looked around the room again, then out onto the balcony. He couldn't bring himself to say Bhootbhai's name. He didn't know why, exactly, but he needed to get the hell out of that suite. "Mr. Bice, I really should be going now. I didn't realize how late it was getting."
"Ask your third question, Mr. Stacy."
James leaned forward and pulled his shirt away from his back, trying to give his skin some air and maybe get his shirt to dry a little bit. "We have a s-source who says you have committed a murder. Recently. And another who says that you may have committed other murders in the past."
Bice took a large step toward him, almost a lunge. James flinched, but Bice just laughed, then leaned back on the table he'd taken the hat from.
James's hands were wet now, and he wiped them on his pant legs. "Mr. Bice, we c-can continue the interview tomorrow. I—"
Bice held up one hand to cut him off, then nodded toward the far end of the room. James turned to see two large men, one bald and one with red hair, both wearing black leather jackets, approaching him.
15
Back in his room, Alex placed his cell phone on the desk, called reception to set up a wake-up call, and lay down on his bed.
The room had that familiar hotel-room scent: a slight mustiness, partially masked by floral cleaning supplies. He listened to the sounds of the city—light rain, an occasional honk. Quiet, compared to New York.
He was running over what Camila had said to him, and he knew she was right. There was something missing in him, and there was no way she was going to fill it.
He went to the window and slid it open as far as it would go—only about three inches before hitting a crossbar. He poked a few fingers through the crack and let the rain hit them as he scanned the buildings, apartments, and offices in the distance. For a few minutes, he watched an amorphous figure walk the sidewalk below.
He lay back on his bed and interlaced his fingers behind his head.
Maybe it wasn't Camila he wanted, but what Camila had. Ease in the world. Comfort. He watched her move through his mind and was struck by a sudden wave of guilt.
He powered on his phone and tapped out a quick text to Greta: Hey baby. Just thinking about you. I know you're asleep, but let's talk tomorrow.
He had two missed calls from James from earlier in the evening, but no messages, and he figured James had been asleep for a while now. He powered off his phone, not wanting to get into a text exchange with Greta on the off chance that she was awake.
He rolled over toward the window, trying to isolate thoughts of Camila and Greta in his head, to hold only one of them in his mind at a time, but he couldn't.
It was as though they were two sides of the same woman. When he focused on Greta, his bodily experience changed. He felt solid, heavy, more alive.
When he imagined Camila, he felt a nervousness, like he was a wisp of smoke, floating up out of his body and disappearing. He remembered the feeling. He'd had it riding in the back of a taxi with her in Washington Heights four days after they met. It was like Camila was a black hole, and he was falling in.
He saw Camila next to the chain link fence, and played her words over and over in his head. What was it about him that was missing?
The first thing that came to mind were the anonymous calls, the dissatisfaction at failing to get to the bottom of the story. But he'd felt it long before that. His parents' deaths, maybe? But he knew he'd felt it before they died, too, even if he hadn't been conscious of it at the time.
Whatever it was had been missing for a long time.
It reminded him of a time when he'd slept through his alarm clock and its beeping had become part of his dream. Part of his brain had heard the sound in the room, but the desire to stay asleep had been strong enough that another part found a way to incorporate it into the dream.
But there was a layer of suspicion, too, that the beeping wasn't really part of the dream—that it didn't fit somehow. Slowly, the beeping had become a slight irritation within the context of the dream and started to appear as something outside the dream, something from a different category of experience. Eventually, he'd woken up and realized that he'd been listening to the beeping for a long time.
He thought of parties and women and work. Words and stories. Reporting jobs he'd done. Pieces he'd filed, often dictating off the top of his head from a bar or a busy street corner in Manhattan. Images of Greta came, too. Her body long and lean, her hair straight and black. And then the way she made him feel. Confident and relaxed. Memories of his parents came as well. Scenes of them alive, and imagined scenes of their deaths. Their blue Camry sliding off the road, exploding after crashing into a cedar tree.
All of it felt like a kind of cover-up.
Like he was waking from a long dream that was his life, hearing for the first time the alarm beeping inside him. The beeping was the feeling he was trying to avoid. He couldn't find words for the feeling, but it was as though a thin, gray cloud had settled over him.
He rolled off the bed in frustration, then stepped over to the window and stared at the downtown Seattle ferry terminal and the nine-mile stretch of dark water that led to Bainbridge Island, his hometown. He shook out his arms and legs, like a sprinter just before a race. He wanted to feel solid, truly there, but the amorphous gray fog persisted.
He could see the water close to the ferry dock, illuminated by parking lot lights. He felt sucked in, like he was becoming as wavy as the water. Underneath the confidence and intelligence, the sex and the work, and the wild swirl of activity that had been his life, there was a grayness, a vacancy.
Everything in his life had served a single purpose: to fill that vacancy. At first, it was positivity and fun—the carefree teenager he'd been. Next, food and drink, women. Then, after his parents died, it had become work and control and exercise. After that, came Camila, or at least the idea of Camila, and now, Greta.
Alex stumbled back and collapsed onto the bed. He stared out at the rain and the lights for a few more minutes, then rolled onto his back. Within a few minutes, he fell asleep.
16
The one with red hair was slightly shorter and had a large mole on his cheek, but both men were over six feet tall, stocky, and wore unzipped black leather jackets that didn't look as though they could zip over their barrel chests. The bald one wore a dark mustache, and a tattoo of a calligraphy symbol peeked above the collar of his white t-shirt.
As they took their places behind Bice, James squished the sweat between his toes. He could smell himself now. Losing fat released toxins, and whenever he sweated these days, he smelled terrible.
Bice stood over him, his feet on either side of James's, and inhaled through his nose, then took a small step back. "You smell disgusting."
"I kn-n-n-ow," James managed. He could barely get the word out.
"Your partner, Mr. Vane. I'm very fond of him."
"You tried to have him k-killed by that little guy, Rak."
"I did no such thing."
Bice gestured to the two men, then sat down in his chair. The men walked around Bice, stood on either side of James, grabbed his elbows, and lifted him to his feet.
"This guy reeks," the bald one said in what sounded like a Russian accent.
James was approaching panic. "B-Bathroom? P-Please, c-can I use the—"
"Get his phone, his wallet, everything he has," Bice said.
; "I'm about to f-faint. Need to . . . splash some w-w-water on my . . . c-cool d-down."
The two men looked at Bice, who nodded. They patted James down and took everything he had on him. Wallet. Phone. Room key. Spare change. And the papers Innerva had given him.
The redhead led James out of the living room and down a hallway lined with abstract art and gold wall sconces. At the second door, he reached inside, turned on a light, and pushed James in. "Be quick," he said in a low, almost inaudible grumble.
Inside the bathroom, James pushed the door closed. He looked at his flushed reflection in the mirror and pressed his hands against his face, his skin feeling hot and cold at the same time. He turned on the cold water and splashed some on his face, then closed his eyes. He tried to think, but his mind was a jumble and his legs were shaking.
A phone. There was an image of a phone in the jumble.
He opened his eyes and saw the reflection of a phone, low on the wall, next to the toilet.
He heard the grumbling voice of the redhead from the other side of the door. "Hurry up."
"I w-w-will."
With the water still running in the sink, he moved over to the door and pressed his ear against it, trying to hear what was being said outside the bathroom.
Bice's voice. "Give me his phone." Then a pause. "Give me those."
The papers. Bice was looking at the papers Innerva had given him. James pressed the handle on the toilet and, as it flushed, he picked up the phone as gently as he could. When the sound of the flushing toilet was at its loudest, he pressed the lock button in the center of the doorknob.
He heard footsteps, then Bice's voice again. "Get him out of there."
He held the phone up to his ear and pressed "9" for an outside line. The dial tone came on and he dialed Alex's number.
The doorknob rattled, then the voice of the grumbling redhead. "Unlock the door. No one said you could lock the door."
Alex's phone didn't ring. Straight to voice mail.