“So you’re going to blow the whistle?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Marlene in a tone that did not encourage probing. “You’ll be interested to know we have a line on Canman, or Mike Dugan does. Lucy’s going over to Old St. Pat’s tonight to get the scoop from this guy who’s apparently the king of the mole people.”
After a considering pause, Karp said, “I’m not sure I like Lucy getting involved in this. Why don’t you go?”
“Because I have other stuff to do, and because Lucy is quite competent enough to collect some information.”
“But that’s it, right? Just information.”
“She really wants to find Canman. He’s a friend.”
“He’s a serial killer.”
“I thought Cooley was the serial killer.”
“There are enough killings to go around for the two of them,” snapped Karp. “You need to back me up on this, Marlene. I don’t want Lucy going anywhere near those tunnels.”
“She has Tran to watch her.”
“Yet another serial killer. I mean it, Marlene.”
“I know you mean it, but we’ve been through this I don’t know how many times before. You want to be protective and a good daddy, but the choice is either backing her up when she wants to do stuff you think might be risky, or forbidding her and making her feel guilty when she goes ahead and does it anyway. She’s seventeen now and it’s only going to get worse. At least she’s not riding every Saturday night in the back of a pickup driven by a drunk teenager, like half the kids her age in America.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No, it’s a lot more scary than looking for a guy in a tunnel while holding hands with the most dangerous man in North America and his numerous associates.”
“I want her right next to me, then.”
“Good. It’ll be a family thing, then, like the magazines are always telling us to do,” Marlene said with finality, and slipped on the headphones.
It had taken Lucy some time to get used to the man’s stench, compared to which Jingles’s fierce pong was that of a baby fresh from the bath. The man had to actually be rotting, or have dead animals trapped between the layers of his clothes. He was playing chess with the priest in a room in the basement of the church. They were playing slowly and silently, and after the first half hour she gave up following the game. Lucy was the worst chess player in her family. She had never beaten either of her parents, and recently even Zak had knocked her off, amid merciless laughter. Whatever brain cells were used for chess in normal people had clearly been displaced in her head by those devoted to language: the tricky tonalities of Hmong reigning in place of the King’s Indian defense. After a brief greeting, Father Dugan had returned his attention to the board. The other man had not responded to her at all, which miffed her, and so she passed the time staring rudely at him. There was a good deal to see. He was big, for one thing; his head was like a slightly deflated basketball, covered with a wool cap that was kelly green under the grime. The ear she could see was only a fringe of greased cartilage around a black hole, for the man had clearly been in a bad fire at some time. His face, riven with scars and discolored grafts, was tugged subtly out of place so that one side seemed to smile as the other frowned. Lucy was on the frowning side. He had an untreated cleft palate and a harelip, too, and his eyes were of two different colors, one black, the other a misty hazel. Spare Parts, indeed, although the priest called him Jacob.
“’Eck,” said Spare Parts.
The priest let out a regretful sigh and a low chuckle. He moved a piece. His opponent responded. Then a brief flurry of moves and the man said, “’Eck ’ate.”
The priest toppled his king, winked at Lucy, rose, and said, “Good game. Thank you, Jacob. Why don’t I make us some tea? I think there’s some old doughnuts left from a committee meeting, too.”
Dugan left. Spare Parts said nothing, but slowly replaced the pieces on the board. His hands were huge and showed red in fissures where the skin was not black with filth.
“You’re a good chess player, huh?” said Lucy, oppressed by the silence. “I’m not. I can’t play for beans. Where did you learn how?”
The massive head turned, and he looked at her, into her eyes; she felt an actual jolt, and into her mind came the line from the Yeats poem her mother was always quoting, the one about the creature with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. Tran sometimes looked at her like that, in moments of distraction, when the kindly persona he had constructed for her benefit fell away, and she looked into more pain and loss than human beings were really designed for. There was nothing of society in it, only the horrible truth of existence. It took all her will to keep her eyes on his. Finally, he said something, a series of honks with most of the consonants stripped out.
I’ve heard of you, he was saying. You work at the church.
“Yes, Holy Redeemer. Do you go there?”
No. I only come here. I like to play chess. He gives me books. The man drew a deep breath, as if this much language had exhausted him.
You’re looking for Canman.
“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Do you know where he is?”
The great head nodded twice.
“Will you take me there?”
What do you want with him?
“I’m his friend. I want to help him. We think people are looking for him, the police, and also a policeman who may want to hurt him. We can help him, but we have to find him before they do.”
They won’t find him.
“They will. They have sweeps of the subways, of the homeless. You know that! They’re planning a big one on Wednesday because they think Canman is the bum slasher, and they’ll look until they find him. We need to find him first.”
He’s not in the subways.
“He’s not?”
Not in the subways. He’s in Rat Alley.
Father Dugan entered the room then, carrying a tray.
“Here’s our tea,” he said cheerfully. “I see you’re getting along.”
“Jacob says the Canman’s not in the subways.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “we were discussing that before you arrived. Apparently there’s a disused railway tunnel on the West Side that intersects some kind of derelict sewer system. It’s sealed off from the tunnel proper, or was. Rat Alley, as they call it down there. Do you know that line from The Waste Land ? ‘I think we are in rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones.’ No? Jacob must know it, though. Jacob reads a lot of poetry.”
“In ‘A Game of Chess,’” said Spare Parts.
“Yes,” said the priest. “The section of the poem in which the line appears, he means. Yet another strange conflation of art and life.” Dugan leaned over as he poured tea into Lucy’s cup, caught her eye, and mouthed, “Keep your eyes on me; don’t watch him eat.”
“Yes, Rat Alley,” Father Dugan resumed, “it doesn’t appear on the city’s maps, not that that’s unusual—there’re fourteen hundred miles of sewer line under New York, apparently, besides unbelievable numbers of pipes and tubes and ducts of various kinds. This particular one seems to be the place where people go to escape when the tunnels get too cozy. They also toss garbage in there and an occasional corpse.”
Lucy was, as instructed, keeping her eyes on Dugan, but she could not similarly restrict her ears. Spare Parts when eating sounded like a large fish trapped in a mud puddle by the retreating tide. These sounds paused, and he said, It’s very dangerous. Canman is crazy. I think he’ll be dead soon, anyway. He is half in love with easeful death.
“Is he sick again?” Lucy asked, alarmed.
After a horrible slurp, the deep voice went on, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because they will get him soon. They get them all in Rat Alley.
“Who will get him? You mean the rats?” With this, Lucy forgot herself and looked at Spare Parts.
He stared back at her. Crumbs and powdered sugar were around his horrible maw, and his thick, purple tongue swo
oped out to grab them up. He said, There are no rats left in Rat Alley.
Then he stood up and strode over to a pile of cartons full of donated paperbacks. Lucy had expected him to have the lurching walk of a horror-movie monster, but his stride was strong and athletic. He knelt, selected a book, shoved it into a pocket, and left without another word.
Lucy found herself gasping, and Father Dugan chuckled. “Yes, we don’t breathe too deeply around Jacob.”
“Good Lord!”
“Uh-huh. Stinks like a desert father. What did you think?”
“Of him? Horrible, but not actually scary. He’s very hard, but not evil, like an animal. What’s his story, do you know?”
“Not much. Bits slip out occasionally. Apparently he was born down there. His mother was an illegal of some kind, and probably not all there upstairs. She made her living . . . as you would expect. God knows how he survived, but he did. He got big early, which I guess was a blessing. I have no idea how he learned how to read—he certainly never went to school. I found him one night outside, going through the trash, a pile of books that were too messed up to send anywhere, and I invited him in. He’s bright—you saw him beat me just now—but not exactly with a human intelligence.” Dugan sipped some tea and lit another cigarette. “It makes you count your blessings, doesn’t it?”
“Will he help us find Canman?”
“Oh, he already has. Before you got here, he gave me explicit instructions on how to find this Rat Alley. But he wanted to meet you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, and no false modesty, please. You have quite the rep among the unhoused. Several instances of miraculous healing have been reported.” He wiggled his eyebrows and looked upward.
She giggled and blushed. “Oh, stop it!”
“The pope’s been informed.”
“No, really . . . so we’re really going down there.”
“It looks that way. The sooner, the better. What do your folks think about it?”
“Oh, Dad’s going to object, but he always objects. My mother, of course, is fine with it.” A pregnant silence. “I should go home.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
At the steps leading up from the church basement he asked, “Still having the visions?”
“Few and far between now, although St. T. nearly got me arrested on a train. The message seems to be to study hard and wait. I guess they’re not going to tell me to crown the Dauphin at Reims.”
“And a good thing, too.” He laughed. “And, Lucy? About this whole business . . .” He pinched his lips.
She nodded agreement, hugged him good-bye, and trotted off down Mulberry Street. It was dark at this hour, although the street was lit by the windows of shops and galleries. Banners flapped over the centers of culture and commerce. Just past Kenmare, she spotted a familiar figure moving swiftly in the opposite direction.
“David!”
But Grale did not seem to notice her, or anything else. He was walking rapidly, his tattered jacket flapping like one of the gallery banners, an intense and fixed expression on his face. She moved to intercept him, clutched at his sleeve.
At that he stopped and turned to face her. “David, what’s the matter? Are you okay? You practically ran over me.”
“Oh, sorry.” His face went through a peculiar contortion, as if he were painting David Grale onto something else. But there he was again, the kindly, amused eyes, the angelic expression, the lovely mouth curved into a smile. “Sorry, I was just distracted. What are you doing out? Clubbing? Living the high life of the rich?”
“Oh, right, I’m so much in demand at the more exclusive boîtes. It’s my supermodel face and fashion sense. What’s up with you?”
His smile faded. “More bad news. They found Doug’s body down by the tracks. It’s another one. That makes seven. I’m going over there now, see what I can do. He might have effects or relatives who should be informed.”
Lucy had an unbidden, uncharitable thought that in this particular case the slasher had done society a favor, followed by a spasm of guilt.
Grale seemed to see this transition on her face. “Yeah, I know, I had the same thing, the slasher’s good deed. It shows how far we are from perfect love. Still, it’s a kind of mercy. He had the virus, you know.”
“I didn’t know.” She recalled the fight she had been in with Doug Drug, the blood spilled, and could not help a thrill of loathing.
“Yeah, he had it, and it made him angry. He seemed to go out of his way to share needles with his pals. It’s funny, I know that the rain falleth on the just and the unjust, but wouldn’t it be a kick if like the bad guys got their desserts right here in front of everyone, and the innocent didn’t get raped and murdered? What if there were saints who stuck it to the bad guys in the same way as Mother Teresa took care of the miserable and poor.”
“They wouldn’t stay saints for long, would they?” said Lucy, thinking of her mother. “I mean, if there’s one thing the Church has learned in all this time, it’s that violence and power are corrupting.”
Now he fixed her with his eye and spoke with intensity. “Yes, but don’t you think God gets tired of all this suffering? In Sudan I saw stuff . . . you can’t imagine what people did to each other there. There were times when I wanted to grab an AK and finish off the bunch of them. Not just the bad guys either, all of them, just to make an end, just to let them fly off to heaven or hell or wherever.”
“But you didn’t.”
He seemed to deflate a little. “No. No, I didn’t. But sometimes when I think of people like old Doug there, I have my doubts.” Grale grimaced and shook his head. “Old Doug. He must be getting a stern talking-to right about now.”
“With pitchforks.”
Grale laughed. “Uh-huh, like in the cartoons. But, you know, there’s a theory that hell is completely empty. I mean, figure it out: You die, and all things are revealed. You have absolutely no doubts anymore. God is good, the devil is evil. And God’s mercy extends everywhere, even into the pit. How many souls do you think reject His mercy at that point? Not many, I bet.”
“I don’t know. What about the people who like torment? Or the people who’d never admit they were wrong even if it meant ten thousand years in hell? And what if you don’t like harp music?”
Grale smiled again, but this time in a sadly disapproving way. “You’ve been hanging with the Jesuits again. How is the good father?”
“He’s fine. We found out where Canman is.”
“No kidding! That’s great news. Is he okay?”
“So we hear. We’re going to try to . . . you know, find out more about how he is.” Stupid! she yelled at herself in her head. David was the last one to tell about this. He didn’t have a guileful bone in his body, and he talked to absolutely everybody. All at once she was uncomfortable, wanting to be away home, far from the conflicting and delicious and annoying feelings the man roused in her, and so she made a hurried excuse about having to get up early and practically ran off down the street, her mind full of mortification and all the clever, mature words she never managed to get out in real life.
“Are you really going to do it?” Karp asked, embracing his wife the next morning at the door to the loft.
“I’m going to give it a try,” she said. She was wearing an old black Karan suit, something she had bought in a consignment shop before the money came, and a pair of Jil Sander’s she’d got on sale in what seemed another age. She looked severe and felt the same.
“This is all beyond me,” said Karp.
She laughed. “It might be beyond me, too. I’ll call you.”
She took a cab to the office, went in, and sat behind her desk and waited. The call from Osborne came at a little after ten. She picked up her loaded briefcase and went in.
They were all there, sitting along both sides of the table, with Osborne at the head: Oleg Sirmenkov, sitting next to the boss, then Bell, the lawyer, and Harry Bellow, and Deanna Unger and Marty Fox. They stopped talking whe
n she came in, then started up again, pretending that they hadn’t stopped talking. She took a seat at the foot of the long table, placing her briefcase on the table in front of her. She looked at Harry. He was confused, which was good, she thought, because it meant he hadn’t been involved. Everyone else was staring at her, with expressions ranging from fear to contempt to (in Oleg’s case) cold rage.
Osborne began without preamble. “People, this is a security firm, and the worst thing that can happen to a security firm is a breach in its own security. I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve experienced such a breach. Late on Friday night, Oleg informed me that someone had entered his confidential files and removed some highly sensitive phone records, digital recordings of conversations. I immediately contacted Marty, and he brought in a team to try to find out who had penetrated security and where the files had gone, if possible. The team worked all weekend and found that the intrusion had taken place from a machine on our own intranet. They started looking for traces of the missing files on every hard drive in the office and were eventually successful in locating the intruder.”
Osborne looked at Marlene. “I’ve been thinking it over half the night, and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why you’d want to do such a thing. Maybe you’d like to explain yourself, Marlene.”
“Gladly. First of all, just for my own personal curiosity, were you in on it yourself? I mean the scam.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Osborne. “What scam?”
Marlene reached into her briefcase and withdrew a stack of neatly stapled documents. She handed a short stack to Fox and to Harry, and they automatically passed them around the table.
“This is a translated transcript of conversations in Russian between Oleg and a man in Pristina, Kosovo, named Ilya. They demonstrate that not only did Oleg know the identity of the people who kidnapped Richard Perry, but also he knew, considerably in advance, the time and place they had planned to carry out the snatch. Which occurred as planned, as we all know. Further conversations concern the rescue. Oleg was at some pains to make sure that it went down two days before our IPO.”
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