Box Nine (39 page)

She stands for a moment, taken back. She realizes she, too, should leave, get back to the Barracuda, get back to the green duplex, get on the phone, and start setting strategy. Instead, she moves to the fireplace, squats down, and hunches in over her knees. She tries to lean close and get any last heat the embers might have to offer. But it's no good. She's got a chill and an ache that's only going to grow. The thing is to keep it under control for the next three or four hours.

That's the goal. Get through a specific period of time. Keep the mind on that simple goal. Continue to perform, to move through the motions. Fulfill the duties, the responsibilities. Do her job.

And, where Cortez is concerned, shoot high.

Chapter Thirty

E
va sits on the aluminum fold-out chair in the back room of the Bach Room. She keeps both hands around her glass of ginger ale. The glass is growing foggy with the discrepancy between the heat of her fingers and the cold of the ice cubes. Rourke is sitting in a chair across the table, opposite her. He's trying to make her as uncomfortable as possible, staring at her for long periods of time without blinking his eyes.

In fact, it's Rourke who is uncomfortable, and growing more troubled as time goes by. He keeps biting on hangnails, using his teeth to tear at tiny strips of skin near the base of his thumbnail until trickles of blood run down his knuckle toward his wrist. There's a bottle of Wild Turkey on the table, the cap off, but Rourke hasn't taken a drink yet. It's apparent to Eva that he wants one, and she doesn't understand his abstinence. But for some reason, it gives her some confidence, it signals some obscure assurance that she's made correct decisions, chosen the right path.

Marconi, the bartender, sticks his head through the doorway curtain, looks from Eva to Rourke, then says, “He's here.”

Rourke nods his head rapidly.

Marconi says, “He wants to see you out in front.”

Rourke's eyes break away from Eva and look down at the table. They stay focused there for a second, as if there were writing, some kind of microscopic graffiti, on the tabletop. Then he rises, pushing back the chair with the back of his knees, making an awful scraping noise against the floor. He moves out into the bar and Marconi steps just inside the doorway and stands in the corner watching Eva, his hands together behind his back. He seems frightened just being inside the back room.

Eva asks, “Is everything all right?” not really interested in a response, but more to prod and jangle Marconi, watch for a reaction.

He says nothing, looks down to the floor in the same manner that Rourke looked to the tabletop.

From out in the bar they both hear a slapping sound, like the flat palm of a hand coming down on wood, onto the bartop maybe. There's an undercurrent of mumbling that can't be made out and then silence again.

Rourke calls Marconi's name and the bartender exits the back room without another look at Eva, as if he might turn to salt with a last glance. After a few seconds the curtain is pushed back and a rail-thin man steps into the room. He's wearing a charcoal suit and a crimson silk tie marked with a splatter of grey dots. It's impossible to make a good guess of his age, but if pressed, Eva would say late thirties to mid-forties.

He takes the seat Rourke had been in, reaches to an inside suit coat pocket, and withdraws a pair of small round wire-frame glasses. He makes slow precise movements opening the glasses, holding them up to check for smudges, then securing them on his face. He acts with such care that Eva thinks a wrong move could break both the glasses and the small bones in his nose or behind his ears.

She decides to take the initiative. She says, “So you're the Paraclete?”

He smiles at her, waits a moment, then says, “If you say so.”

She shakes her head and smiles back. “No, no. I need you to say so.”

He breathes in and out, reaches to his face to adjust the glasses, then brings his hands down to the tabletop and folds them together, staring at her and still smiling the whole time.

“I am the Paraclete,” he says.

She nods. “I'm Eva Barnes,” she says. “And as you probably know, I'm the supervisor of the postal station across the street. I appreciate you sparing the time to speak with me.” She hopes her voice sounds ambiguous, gives nothing away. She wants him to be in doubt as to whether she's mocking him or acting in some rehearsed, rigid manner.

“I think,” he says, “we could both see that the benefits of our meeting would outweigh the risks.”

Right away, it's clear he's taken on the same tone and measure as Eva, and any confidence she'd taken from Marconi's nervousness vanishes. She clears her throat and says, “I guess my first question is, do you think you're the first person who's attempted to transport illicit materials through the U.S. Postal Service?”

He sits back in the chair and his hands, still folded, fall into his lap.

“Ms. Barnes,” he says. “I'm really not overly concerned about the originality of the method. Only its effectiveness. Also, it's
your
employee, Mr. Rourke, who approached my people. Not the other way around.”

She knows she's on the edge of starting to panic, that the best thing to do is make her intentions clear and try to get out. She says, “In any case, Mr.—”

He ignores her try for a name and after a beat she continues, “There's been some serious offenses committed.”

“Offenses against whom, Ms. Barnes?” he asks blandly.

“Against my employer. Against the Federal Government.”

“And your job, then, would be to report those offenses. To the correct channels.”

“Yes, it would.”

“And, may I ask, why have you not done this?”

“Who's to say I haven't?”

He smiles and waits, then opens his hands, extends them to his sides like some kind of priest, and says, “Our present situation indicates otherwise, don't you think? This very scenario we're acting out. I have to assume you wish to negotiate.”

She gives up any hope of manipulating the conversation. She says simply, “I want in.”

“You want in,” he repeats, neither questioning her nor confirming the words. Just repeating, replaying the sounds.

He takes the glasses off, folds them carefully, and repockets them. He stands up, puts his hands in his pants pockets in an attempt to look casual. It doesn't work. He slouches his shoulders and asks, “Weren't you at all afraid of the consequences of these actions, of approaching Mr. Rourke? Didn't you consider the likelihood that you might endanger yourself—”

She interrupts. “Who should be more afraid, me or you?”

He starts to walk around the table, brushing at his lapels as he goes. “I can only speak for myself, Eva—you don't mind if I call you Eva, do you?—but you can't really allow yourself a sense of fear in this field. You have to be able to excise it, or at the very least, suppress it.”

He moves behind Eva, places his hands on her shoulders lightly. He can feel her trembling.

“You have no guarantee that I haven't told someone,” she says, “that I don't have a partner waiting to hear from me.”

“Thank you,” he says, “you didn't disappoint. I was counting on that line. How many films have we seen where someone in just your situation speaks that exact line? It's like a verbal archetype. This is what the movies have brought us, Eva. A vocabulary we can all share. We can actually anticipate the words.”

He begins to rub a slow massage from the outer rim of her shoulders to the back of her neck. He feels the skin on her neck going cool and clammy.

“That doesn't make the possibility of me having a friend any less real,” she says.

“What would your friend's name be?” he asks.

“I don't think so.”

“Would he or she be a co-worker, by any chance?”

“I don't think I'll be answering these kinds of questions.”

“You have no family, do you, Eva?”

“Now we're getting way off track.”

“Not necessarily. I know you have no family, Eva—”

Her swallow and her voice catch. “People know me. There are a lot of people who know me—”

He eases her forward in her chair and runs the flat of his fist down the line of her spine, from neck to lower back. “Calm down, Eva. You misunderstand me. You assume I'm threatening you. I'm not threatening you. Were I to threaten you—” he brings his hand around to the front of her throat, pulls his extended index finger lightly across the skin just above her Adam's apple—“you would certainly know it. There'd be no doubt.”

He can feel her muscles tighten under his hands.

“I was simply trying to make the point that an organization like mine can function in much the same manner as a family, extend the same sensation of belonging.”

He runs his fingers through her hair slowly.

“How much money do you want?”

She starts to shake her head. She wishes he were still in front of her where she could see his face, get more of an idea of his intentions.

“I hadn't really thought about an actual, a specific …”

“You were thinking of the bigger picture, yes? You were thinking in terms of belonging, is that right?”

“I don't know. I …”

His hands come around her again, the finger again drawing across her throat, but then his hands descend down her blouse, rub over her breasts. She immediately pushes them away, but he persists, strokes her brow softly, then begins to unbutton the blouse.

“You said yourself, Eva, you want in.”

She stays silent, stares at the blank opposite wall, then closes her eyes.

“Say it, Eva. You want to belong.”

She doesn't speak, but she doesn't fight him either. Behind her back, she hears him shirking out of his suit coat. She hears a zipper sound, the light jangle of a buckle, a shoe bounce off the wall.

Keeping her eyes closed she moves from the chair, rotates slightly until her behind is on the edge of the table, then pushing her feet off the chair legs, she comes full up onto the table and lies on her back. In a second, he's fully on top of her, kissing her neck, whispering, breathy, next to her ear.

“You've made the right choice. You'll be safe now. In the Paraclete's family.”

Chapter Thirty-One

I
ke sits in the darkness of his bedroom closet, door closed, huddled up among a rough pile of shoes, sneakers, and work boots. He cradles the radio in his lap, the volume low enough, he judges, so that no one on the other side of the door could hear anything. He presses the mesh grid that covers the speaker to his ear. It has a cold metal feeling, not unpleasant, sort of refreshing.

After Lenore ran out, he'd run to the bathroom and vomited up his whole breakfast until he was racked with dry heaves. Then he'd filled the sink with ice-cold water and plunged his head in several times. He dried himself and retreated to the closet and tried to sleep. When this proved impossible, he grabbed the radio and tuned in WQSG.

An ad for a funeral home goes over, violins fade out, and the voice of the talk-show host speaks again.

TALK-SHOW HOST: Hoo, boy, it's going to be one of those nights again. Is there a full moon out there tonight, Gus? Gus Z, of course, my engineer and righthand man. Gus is shaking his head no, but you couldn't tell it by the phone calls tonight. Loon city, if you know what I'm saying. Lock the doors and windows, people, it's going to be a long haul till the light of dawn. Hello, Joyce J, from the west side. Talk to Ray, you're on the air.

JOYCE: Yes Ray, I'm just calling, I just want to say, you've got me completely terrified now and I can't sleep a wink, I keep going to the window, you really shouldn't say such things—

RAY: Sorry, Joyce, my friend, but the truth will sometimes do that to you. Our lovely little city has gone out-and-out bonkers this week.

JOYCE: Did you find out any more on all that commotion down at the Canal?

RAY: We are still waiting for a callback from Chief Bendix, but I'll tell you, Gus has had the police scanner on since we came into the studio tonight and it's a madhouse out there.

JOYCE: I've locked all the doors.

RAY: And well you might. Our city is in the midst of a real breakdown if the police radio here tells the truth. What is going on out there? I'll give my theory if anyone's interested.

JOYCE: Tell us, Ray, we all need—

The woman's voice is gone with a high-pitched bleep.

RAY: Oops, we seem to have lost Joyce from the west side. Listen, Joyce, keep the dead bolts secure. And you might want to push some heavy furniture, if you can manage it, in front of all the doorways. So the question gets asked, how did we arrive at this juncture? People, you don't have to be some anal-retentive, think-tank intellectual to find an answer. There is a pervading weakness that's crept into our society. It's our own fault and now we have to pay the price. Painful, I know. But perhaps we should have thought of that when we slackened our immigration standards and eliminated the death penalty and tossed unsafe fluoride chemicals into our reservoirs. A little foresight is what I'm speaking about. A need for people unafraid to open their mouths and move their tongues and speak the truth.

Ike turns off the radio. The telephone is ringing in the kitchen. He opens the door, crawls out of the closet, stumbles to his feet, and manages a run by the hallway. He grabs the phone on its fifth ring. A voice is already speaking as he brings the receiver to his ear and says, “Hello.”

Eva says, “Just do it. Meet me at the station. Eight now.”

Then the call clicks dead and Ike holds the receiver and, though he knows she's already hung up, he says, “I can't. I can't go out.”

He stands like this for a few minutes, finally replaces the phone in its cradle, then immediately takes the receiver off the hook again and leaves it on the counter.