The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  Or the look that Wallace shot back.

  As a barber who spent every day watching clients in a mirror, Laurent was fluent in talking with just your eyes. He knew a thankyou when he saw one. And right there, in that moment, he also knew the hierarchy of loyalties that would drive their relationship for the next twenty-six years.

  “There… pull in there!” Palmiotti said, eventually motioning to the putty-colored building in the distance with the backlit sign that read Emergency Room. “There’s parking spots in front.”

  Even before the van bucked to a stop, Palmiotti was outside in the rain. With a tug, he whipped open the side door of the van, and in one quick motion, he and Wallace scooped up Eightball and—shouting the words “Wait here!”—carried him off like tandem lifeguards toward the sliding doors of the emergency room.

  There was a hushed whoosh as they disappeared, leaving the barber breathing heavy in the driver’s seat, still buzzing with adrenaline. But as fast as reality settled in, all the mental avoidance of the past half hour faded with equal speed. To drive out here… to even take them at all… Laurent had said they should call an ambulance—but in the rush of chaos… the way Eightball was bleeding… and all that screaming… Wallace seemed so sure. And when Wallace was sure, it was hard to argue. They had to take him themselves. Otherwise, he would’ve died.

  “You okay?” a soft female voice coughed from the back of the van.

  Laurent nodded.

  “I-I’m sorry for this—I really am,” she added.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Laurent insisted, staring out at the raindrops that slalomed down the front windshield. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I’m not. They told me what happened when you came back—Eightball grabbing a baseball bat… It shouldn’t’ve escalated like that, but lemme tell you—”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “—if someone did that to my sister… and I was your brother—”

  “You weren’t there,” Minnie insisted, her voice cracking. “You didn’t see what happened. Orson wasn’t the only one who made him bleed.”

  The words hung in the van, which was battered by the metal pinging of raindrops from above. Laurent slowly twisted in his seat, turning to the chubby girl with the wet hair and the now dried train tracks of black mascara that ran down her face. She sat Indian-style, looking every bit her young age as she picked at nothing in the bloodstained carpet.

  The barber hadn’t noticed it before. Hadn’t even registered it. But as he thought about it now, Orson’s clothes—just like Palmiotti’s—were mostly clean. But here, in the back of the van…

  The front of Minnie’s leather jacket… her neck… even her English Beat T-shirt… were covered in a fine spray of blood.

  Just like you’d get if you hit something soft. With a baseball bat.

  Still picking at nothing in the blood-soaked carpet, Minnie didn’t say a word.

  In fact, it took another ten minutes before her tears finally came—pained, soft whimpers that sounded like a wounded dog—set off when her brother exited from the sliding doors of the emergency room, stepped back into the rain, and told them the news: Eightball was dead.

  92

  You have no idea how hard this is,” the man with the razor says as he sits directly behind me in the backseat of the car.

  “Listen,” I plead. “There’s no reason to—”

  “Beecher, I’ve asked you two times now. Please put your phone down.”

  “It’s down… I put it down,” I say, though I don’t tell him that I haven’t hung up. If I’m lucky, Dallas can hear every word we’re saying. “Just please… can you lower the razor?”

  In the rearview, the man barely reacts, though the razor does disappear behind my headrest. Still, the way he manically keeps shifting in his seat—sitting up so close I hear him breathing through his nose—he’s panicking, still making his decision.

  “I’m sorry you found him,” the man says, sounding genuine as he stares down at his lap. “That’s why you were running just now—all out of breath. You saw him, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here picking up a notebook—”

  “Please don’t do that to me. I was being honest with you,” he says, sounding wounded, his head still down. I feel a slight nudge in my lower back. From his knees. His feet tap furiously against the floor, making the whole car shake. Whatever he’s about to do, it’s weighing on him. “I know it’s over, Beecher. I know you saw Griffin.”

  “If you think I’m the one doing this… with the blackmail… It’s not me,” I tell him. “I swear to you—Clementine’s—”

  “They know the roles. They know who’s done this. And when it comes to the fight you’ve picked… the poor girl’s as dead as you are.”

  It’s the second time in two days someone’s mentioned my death as if it’s inevitable. It’s starting to piss me off.

  Behind me, the man with the razor continues to lean forward, elbows resting on his still bouncing knees. He again takes a heavy breath through his nose. It’s not getting any easier for him. “You’re a history guy, right, Beecher?” Before I can answer, he asks, “Y’ever hear of a guy named Tsutomu Yamaguchi?”

  I shake my head, searching the parking lot and scanning the grounds for a guard… for an orderly… for anyone to help. There’s no one in sight.

  “You never heard of him? Tsutomu Yamaguchi?” he repeats as I finally place his accent. Flat and midwestern. Just like the President’s. “In 1945, this man Yamaguchi was in the shipbuilding business. In Japan. Y’know what happened in 1945 in Japan?”

  “Please… this—whatever this is about. You can let me go. No one’ll ever know. You can say I—”

  “Hiroshima. Can you imagine? Of all the towns that this guy’s shipbuilding business sends him to, on August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was visiting Hiroshima at the exact moment one of our B-29s dropped the atomic bomb,” he continues as if I’m not even there. “But ready for the twist? Yamaguchi actually survives. He suffers bad burns, spends the night in the city, and then quickly races to his hometown, which is guess where?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Nagasaki—which gets hit with the second bomb three days later. And God bless him, Yamaguchi survives that too! Blessed by God, right? A hundred and forty thousand are killed in Hiroshima. Seventy thousand die in Nagasaki. But to this day, this one man is the only person certified by the Japanese government to have survived both blasts. Two atomic bombs,” he says, shaking his head as he continues to stare down at the blade in his lap. “It may be on a smaller scale, but I can tell you, Beecher. In this life, there are days like that. For all of us.”

  I nod politely, hoping it’ll keep him talking. On my phone, it says my call has been connected for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. If Dallas and his Culper Ring are as good as I think they are, it won’t be long until the cavalry comes running.

  In the small of my back, the man’s knees stop shaking.

  “Mine was that night in the rain,” he adds as his voice picks up speed. “I knew it the instant they brought him in. Forget the blood and the bits of bone that they said she drove into his brain…”

  She? Did he just say she?

  “… I knew it from the split second I saw the looks on those boys’ faces. It was more than terror, more than remorse. The pain in their eyes was like… it was like they knew they’d never be able to face God Himself again.” He looks up from the blade. His eyes are red and bloodshot. “Y’ever been around a victim of crime—someone who’s been raped or beaten or even mugged? The depth of their horror—you feel that pain through the pores of your skin. I didn’t want to admit it, but that night… that was my own Hiroshima sitting right there in front of me.”

  As he says the words, my own pores—my whole body—I feel the despair rising off him. He doesn’t have a choice. From here on in, there’s only one way to keep me
from talking. Outside, I eye the service road that leads up from the front gate. Still no cavalry. If I run, the knife’s close enough that he can still do damage. My hands stay gripped to the steering wheel. I search between the seats… across the floor… looking anywhere for a weapon.

  “The worst part was how easy it was to pretend otherwise and keep it all silent. Not just with Griffin. With her too. With the stroke…”

  The stroke? I think for a second. He said her. Does he mean…?

  “They blamed it on the Turner syndrome, but when someone takes the long accordion hose from her vacuum cleaner, hooks one end to the tailpipe of her family’s Honda Civic, and then loops the other end into the window of the driver’s seat? That’s not Turner syndrome. That’s penance,” he says. “Palmiotti didn’t find her for four hours. To this day, him pulling her out… it’s a miracle she even survived.”

  My chest cavity feels hollow—all my organs gone—as I try to take a breath. All this time, we thought Wallace was protecting himself. But he was actually trying to protect… her. His sister. “You’re saying Minnie… that Minnie Wallace was the one who… and she tried to commit—?”

  “You’re not listening! I need you to listen to me!” he explodes, his face contorting with pain. “I was just the driver! I didn’t do anything—I was just trying to help some… they were kids!”

  “Then you need to listen to me now,” I interrupt, trying to make eye contact in the rearview. “If that’s the case, you need to tell your story. You have nothing to worry about. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t,” he agrees as the pain on his face only gets worse. “I just took them to the hospital. They told me Griffin was dead.”

  “Then there you go. That’s what matters,” I say, knowing the benefits of agreeing. The sooner I win him over, the more I can buy myself more time. “All these years… you had no idea.”

  “It’s true… I-I was just the driver. How am I supposed to know they gave him a fake name—or—or—or transferred him here once Wallace got his Senate seat? They told me he was dead.”

  “Exactly—they told you he was dead. That’s all you knew, right?”

  I wait for his answer, but this time there’s only silence from the backseat.

  I glance again in the rearview. Our eyes lock.

  “That’s all you knew, right?” I ask for the second time.

  But as a watery glaze fills his bloodshot eyes, I quickly understand. The worst lies in life are the ones we tell ourselves.

  “You knew…” I say. “You knew Eightball was here.”

  “Only recently.”

  “How recently? A week? A month?”

  His face goes pale like an onionskin. “I lied to my own soul.”

  “How long?” I ask.

  “Two years. Two and a half years,” he whispers, his head sloping down as if his neck no longer works. The car still sits in the parking lot. I search the service road. Still no one there. “You have to understand, when I found out… when I confronted Palmiotti… They said they moved him here to keep an eye on him—to take care of him—but I was the only one who came to visit him. He needed to know… I needed to tell him what Wallace had done. For me. I didn’t do it for the greater good. It was only good for me. But I had no idea Nico heard me,” he adds, his voice at full sprint. “That’s why, at the cemetery… when you said you were coming here… I knew. I knew it! This was my chance to end it. I’m sorry for being so weak, Beecher—but this is what I should’ve done the moment this started…”

  Over my shoulder, he raises his blade to cut me.

  But in the mirror, I see it.

  It’s already covered in blood.

  I look down, patting my neck. I didn’t feel anything…

  Without warning, the blade drops from his hand, bouncing and falling into the front seat.

  His onionskin face goes practically transparent. He sags backward, sinking in his seat.

  Oh God. Has he been shot?

  I check the front window… the sides. All the glass is intact. But as I spin back to face him… in the seat… There’s blood. So much blood. It’s not splattered. It’s contained. A small pool. On the seat… on his arms… No. Not his arms…

  It’s coming from his wrists.

  “What’d you do?” I yell.

  “She paid her penance,” he whispers through a hard cough. “I need to pay mine.”

  “What the hell’d you do!?” I repeat as a slow red puddle blooms in the backseat, raining down to—On the floor. I couldn’t see it before.

  At his feet, a larger pool of blood seeps into the carpet. From the size of the puddle… all that red… He did this. When we were talking. He wasn’t just staring down at the razor. He’d used it.

  “You tell them—you tell them there’s a cost,” he sputters, about to pass out. “Every decision we make in life, there’s always a cost.”

  “Gimme your wrists! I can stop it!” I tell him.

  “You’re missing the point,” he stutters, no longing cringing. Whatever pain he was feeling is finally gone. “For thirty years, I wondered why they stumbled into my store that night. They could’ve picked any store. Or no store. But it’s no different than that guy… from Hiroshima. It’s no different than Yamaguchi. We spend our lives thinking history’s some arbitrary collection of good and bad moments stirred together in complete randomness. But look at Yamaguchi. When history has your number, there’s… there’s nowhere on this planet you can run.”

  He sags sideways, his breathing sputtering as he collapses against the back door.

  I kick open my own door, rushing outside. Whatever I think of him, he still needs my help. But as my feet hit the concrete and I reach for his door, my face nearly collides with the chest of the man who’s just arrived outside the car and is now blocking my way.

  I know he’s got ground privileges. He followed the path right back the way he came. To the parking lot across from his building.

  “Don’t look so scared, Benjamin,” Nico says, barely noticing that he’s standing in my personal space. “I’m here now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  93

  You need to move,” I say to Nico as I try to cut around him to get to the back door of the car.

  Nico doesn’t budge. Doesn’t move. But he does see what I’m looking at. In the backseat. The black man covered in blood.

  “I know him,” Nico blurts. “He’s the barber.”

  “What?”

  “He comes to give haircuts. To Griffin. But sometimes when he leaves—I check. Griffin’s hair isn’t cut at all. I told them, but they never—”

  “Nico, get out of the way!”

  “The barber… for you to do this to him… he was watching me, wasn’t he? I know their eyes are everywhere.”

  “Nico…”

  “That’s why you came back, isn’t it? To do this. To protect me…”

  “Protect you?”

  “I see your razor. In the driver’s seat,” he says, his eyes flicking back and forth as he dissects the contents of the car. “I see how you killed him.”

  “That’s not—”

  “It makes perfect sense,” he adds, nodding feverishly. “It’s what I said. This was your mission… your trial. The test of Benedict Arnold. And you—you—don’t you see?—you finally passed, Benjamin! Instead of betraying George Washington, you were given a chance… a chance to protect him. And you did! You risked your life to protect me!”

  Annoyed by the nuttiness, I shove him aside, tear open the back door of the car, and feel for a pulse. Nothing. No heartbeat.

  Across the long field that leads back to the medical building, a security guard turns the corner, heading our way.

  “You need to go,” Nico says to me, eyeing the guard. “They can’t know you did this.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I say, still staring at the barber.

  “There’s no need to mourn him. He’s moved on to his next mission.”

&nb
sp; “Will you stop? There is no mission!” I explode, slapping his hand from my shoulder. “There’s no test! There’s no trials! There’s no George Washington—and stop calling me Benedict Arnold! All that matters is this! This, right here,” I hiss, pointing back at the body of the barber. “I know you and she… you caused this! I saw the sign-in sheet! I saw Clementine’s name! And if it’d help you get out of here, I know you’d do anything, including making your daughter blackmail the Pr—!”

  “What’d you call her?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know she’s your daughter,” I challenge.

  He takes a half-step back and stands perfectly still. “She told me she was a graduate student. But students… students don’t come to see me. That’s how I knew,” Nico admits, blinking over and over and suddenly looking… he actually looks concerned. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it just as fast. He’s fitting his own pieces together. But as his eyes stop blinking and the concern on his face slowly turns to pain, I can’t help but think that I have it wrong. Maybe this isn’t the father-daughter operation I just thought it was.

  “When I fed the cats, Clementine used to—I saw her one Wednesday. When the barber was cutting hair,” Nico blurts. “She helped him. She told the barber Griffin’s hair looks better when it’s long in front. He listened. It made her smile more.”

  On my right, across the field, the security guard is less than fifty yards away. On my left, down by the front gate, the guardhouse’s white-and-orange-striped gate arm rises in the air. A black car pulls up the service road. Someone’s just arrived.

  “It made me smile more too,” Nico adds, barely noticing. “But she heard the barber, didn’t she? She heard his confession.”

  “Nico, you need to get away from here,” I tell him as the guard picks up his pace, coming right at us.

  “She did this… she caused this, didn’t she?” Nico says, motioning to the barber.

  On the service road, the black car picks up speed.