The Missing Piece (11 page)

He answered the questions to the best of his knowledge. He held nothing back. The IG turned the last page in her script. She leaned back and pressed her fingers in front of her face.

I'm sorry to hear that you were injured that day.

McQueen nodded. The IG closed her file folder. The stenographer broke down her machine. McQueen got up and politely pushed his chair back under the table. As his hand gripped the doorknob, the IG called his name. She had one more question.

Did you do anything to provoke the gunman who fired the shot?

No.

He turned and went out the door.

The pint came back into focus, untouched except for that initial sip. He wondered now, as he wondered then, if he had turned away from the IG too quickly.

*   *   *

Gary stayed at the computer, poring over the security feeds, until he was certain that Ursula would not drop by after her evening shift ended. Ursula was spending more time at the apartment these last few months, but she had not crossed the line of actually moving in. Her imprint was more subtle: a corner cleared, a closet rearranged, a dresser reorganized in a way that did not mix plain whites with logoed T-shirts. “At least you can find things,” she'd said, though Gary couldn't remember ever having lost anything. Maybe he lost the occasional thing in the sense of not laying his hands on it right away, but not in the sense of never finding it again. His privacy was shrinking, which wasn't a bad thing if you were in a relationship, provided you wanted to be in the relationship. He needed to think on that a little more.

The wooden box remained in the bottom drawer of the dresser, now covered with neatly folded sweatpants instead of wrinkled shirts and tattered sweaters. Though he often sensed the question form in her head, she never actually asked about the box, which was shaped like a treasure chest with a hasp and a padlock. The key was in his wallet.

The box preserved not only privacy but memories: a pencil dented with teeth marks; two metal badges for admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; two ticket stubs for
The Atomic Café
; a matchbook from a Cuban restaurant. He knew from experience that the memories associated with all souvenirs had half-lives that discharged whenever you returned to them. The half-lives of these had spent themselves in the days after he got out of rehab. The book was different. Time and exposure had not changed the minimalist sketches or the simple yet allegorical language. If anything, the book only became more meaningful.

He propped the spine on his dead lap and slowly thumbed through the pages. He closed the book and put it back in the box and covered the box with the sweatpants. He shut the lights, and after his eyes adjusted to the gray tones of his bedroom, began his nightly maneuvers.

The missing piece, his missing piece, was in the courthouse. He knew that for sure.

He lay on his back and adjusted the bed so he would not snore. After a while, he imagined he heard Ursula unlocking the door. But it was only one of those illogical, disconnected thoughts that came on the edge of his dreams.

 

CHAPTER 11

In the tiny West Clare village of Lisdoonvarna a bed-and-breakfast offered painting lessons to its guests. The owner was an accomplished painter herself who believed that the light of West Clare, reflecting off the Atlantic on one side and the gray stone pavements of the Burren on the other, rivaled the light of Provincetown in Massachusetts. Painters came from places like Dublin, Paris, and Berlin to take formal instruction before breakfast and again after dinner. During the day, when the light was available, they took to the roads and could be seen at easels all over Clare, from the rocky coast near Doolin, to the town square in Ennis, to megaliths standing atop lonely hills.

Lord Leinster discovered the bed and breakfast after the debacle of the Roman silver trial. He had returned to Dublin and, feeling antsy, drove west without a particular destination in mind. Clare called to him, and at nightfall he pulled up in front of the B-and-B. He registered as Paul Douglas, paid for a week in cash, then, after toting his baggage to his room, turned off his cell phone and crawled into bed with the idea of sleeping that week away.

Two days later, he took his first painting class.

Leinster had displayed an affinity for several talents in life. Getting married was one, heeding bad advice was another, losing scads of money (often a combination of affinities one and two) was a third. But his affinity for painting was as real as it was surprising. Within a year of that first accidental visit, watercolor landscapes of the Burren bearing the signature “PD” began to appear in galleries in Dublin and Derry. His first sale went for twenty pounds; he thought he had made a million.

Now he was driving the Burren again. The morning air was cool to the point of cold. But the sky was clear, and as the gray hills filled the distance an idea for a series of paintings came to mind. Dolmen. He would paint dolmen. There was the Brownshill Dolmen down in Carlow, there were fields upon fields of dolmen at Carrowmore up in Sligo. But Poulnabrone, the most famous dolmen of all, stood right here in the Burren.

Historic sites in the west of Ireland appeared without fanfare. There would be no car park, just a few cars nosed into the ditch near a small sign that identified whatever was there to be seen across a field or over a hill.

Poulnabrone was visible from the road, its jagged capstone angling toward the sky. Leinster pulled into the ditch. He opened the boot of the car and pulled out his portfolio and his easel and his backpack. The equipment was bulky but light, and he needed only a single climb over the stile and down onto the limestone.

From a distance, the limestone slabs looked as smooth and seamless as the pavement of a motorway. Up close, they were pocked and fissured from eons of hard, wind-driven rains. Lichens clung to the stones, looking like slapdashes of yellow paint. Soil blew into the fissures, creating a toehold for spindly herbs and delicate flowers. One guidebook called the Burren a “moonscape”; another simply called it “ankle-breaking country.”

Leinster dropped his equipment on a flat expanse of rock. The three main stones that made up Poulnabrone were almost perfect table rocks. The two portal stones stood two meters high. The four-meter capstone lay on top. Leinster circled the stones and quickly sketched several different views in his spiral pad. When one of the views spoke to him, he dropped his pad and set up his equipment.

It was not the most convenient of spots. The stone was especially uneven here, the fissures particularly deep. But he eventually leveled the easel and braced it against the breeze. He clamped his board to the easel and started a second, more elaborate sketch.

Leinster was mostly done with his charcoal rendering, the second phase of his creative process, when he heard the car doors slam in the distance. He did not react immediately. In fact, it took several moments for the sounds to register, a few more for his brain to interpret them, and a few more still for him to pull his eyes off the sketch. By then, the couple already had climbed over the stile and were moving unsteadily, hands clasped, toward the dolmen.

Leinster returned to the sketch, hiding behind the easel but sneaking the occasional peek beyond. The couple wore anoraks and floppy hats, fanny packs on their hips, chunky hiking boots on their feet. They veered off as they neared him, perhaps because they respected his privacy, more likely because they wanted to photograph Poulnabrone without him in the frame.

The two stared at the stones for a while, then began to circle toward Leinster. They will bother me soon enough, he thought, but then the two reversed course and returned to their original spot. The man took up beside a portal stone and posed for the woman. Then they exchanged places and the woman posed for the man. Then the man flattened himself at ground level and aimed the camera. He got up, brushed off his clothes, and joined the woman at the portal stone.

The woman fetched the camera and peered at the tiny rear screen. She handed the camera to the man, and then the man turned toward Leinster.

“Hey, buddy, can you help us with something?”

Leinster backed away from the easel, letting his shoulders droop to communicate his displeasure at the interruption.

“It'll take just a second,” said the man.

Leinster dropped the nub of charcoal onto the easel tray and pulled a rag from his pocket to wipe his hands. Might as well get this over with, he thought.

“I'm Jay and this here's Dolly.” The man held out a hand, but Leinster raised his own to show it was still smeared with charcoal. He did not offer his name.

“We're here from Tampa,” continued Jay. “Flying out of Shannon today and we wanted a shot of both of us. But you see, the camera chopped off our heads.”

Jay hopped across a pothole to show Leinster the camera screen.

“Not a problem,” said Leinster. The faster he took the shot, the faster they would be on the wing back to Tampa.

“You just press this button here,” said Jay. He left the camera in Leinster's hands, then took Dolly by the elbow.

The two negotiated the pocks and fissures and potholes to the mouth of the dolmen's chamber. Leinster framed the shot and took the picture.

“How's it look?” Jay called.

“Fine,” said Leinster. “Perfect.”

“Great,” called Jay.

But only Dolly came forward, hopping precariously from stone to stone.

“Go stand with Jay,” she said.

“Really, it's all right,” said Leinster.

“No, please.” She looked at the screen. “You've done us such a big favor. It's such a beautiful shot.”

“Fine,” said Leinster, not caring if she took his tone.

He walked quickly toward Jay, twice losing his balance but recovering each time. His shoes, soft-soled and without much lateral support, were not suited for traipsing on the limestone.

“That Dolly,” said Jay. “She gets an idea in her head, there's no getting it out.”

“I suppose that's helpful at times.”

“You don't know the half of it,” said Jay.

Leinster stood shoulder to shoulder with Jay. Dolly lifted the camera, lowered it, lifted it again.

“You think you're some kind of artist,” said Jay.

It took Leinster a moment to realize Jay's challenge was directed at him. Before he could step away, the gun barrel twisted into his spine.

They walked him toward the road. Dolly tucked his right arm against her left side, while Jay prodded him forward.

“We don't want you to trip,” said Dolly.

“Ankle-breaking country,” said Jay.

“You can't do this,” said Leinster. “People will miss me.”

“Not for long,” said Jay.

Thirty meters short of the stile, Dolly pulled Leinster sideways into a stretch of deeply fissured limestone. Jay dragged the gun barrel up Leinster's spine and pressed it to the back of his head.

“Look down,” he said.

Leinster did. A deep and narrow fissure began just beyond his toes.

“Step into it,” said Jay.

“What?” said Leinster.

“You heard me. Dolly, help him.”

Dolly forced Leinster to point his toes and lower his feet into the fissure, as snug as ski boots.

Dolly stepped away, somewhere behind Leinster. Jay stood in front, aiming the gun.

“I don't understand,” said Leinster. “I'm no good to them dead.”

“Who said anything about dead?” said Jay.

He pocketed the gun just as Dolly ran at Leinster. She was a big woman, and when she drove her shoulder into his back there was no way he could stay upright.

 

CHAPTER 12

Damien Wheatley was once an angry man. He had dark skin, a wild Afro, a mouth that pulled his otherwise handsome features into a sneer, and a cheek scar left behind when that sneer provoked a fight with an even angrier man in a homeless shelter. Despite his disposition, Damien had the ability to present himself as polished and educated by imitating manners of speech he remembered hearing on television and radio as a boy. He learned enough about computer keyboarding at a jobs training program to land a job as an intake clerk at the city's Department of Consumer Affairs. He worked two days, borrowed against his first paycheck, and blew the cash on coke.

Three months later, a termination letter caught up with him at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Dimly remembering the job at Consumer Affairs, he crossed the river to the courthouse at 60 Centre Street and badgered a clerk in the Office of the Self-Represented to help him draft a complaint. His theory: discriminatory termination; his claim: five million dollars in damages. The lawsuit was baseless, and though Damien lost at every turn, he learned much about the courts and the people in them. He learned that if he acted humble and not angry, asked for advice instead of demanding action, listened quietly instead of shouting over people, there was much that a courthouse could offer an industrious and clever person.

He dropped his lawsuit, bought conservative, second-hand clothes, and braided his hair. He continued to visit the courthouse every day, but carried a legal pad in his hand and a pencil in his pocket. He sat in courtrooms and observed motion calendars. He camped outside the clerks' offices and watched people come and go. He lurked in alcoves and listened to lawyers conferring while their juries deliberated or their trials stood at recess. A courthouse, he came to understand, was organized as a rigid class society. He vowed to befriend everyone from the bottom up, but quickly realized that the bottom was all he needed. The custodians and cleaning ladies, the mechanics assistants and the mail clerks, even the blind man who ran the coffee stand, knew all the information an industrious and clever person like himself needed to scratch out a living.

Damien peeked out from the columns of the Old St. James Church. He wore a gray pinstripe suit from the Salvation Army and a pair of black wingtips from Goodwill. His dreadlocks were tied back. His black carry case held a legal pad, pen, and something he hoped to sell. St. James Place was one of several that cut jagged blocks among the tenements in the neighborhood south of Chinatown and north of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the east end of the block, the sun rose over the river and turned the early morning mist into a buttery light. Damien tucked the carry case under his arm so he could pull back the cuff from his wristwatch. Five minutes to eight. His fingernails were clean.