Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

His gaze went to her photograph on the corner table; curled up on a couch, she looked out at him with her mischievous, “I know a secret” smile. But his sister hadn’t looked like that in a very long time. Ten years ago, he had put her in a home, and every other Sunday since then he had made the trip to New Rochelle to visit her. Sitting beside her while she stared at nothing and sang snippets of old songs, he listened to a voice that sounded ancient, as if she’d already lived a dozen lifetimes. She seemed to have become something out of a science fiction movie, a being taken over by an alien life-form, its movements awkward, its speech quaint and disjointed, its motives unknowable.

Even so, Harry was convinced that Lily maintained a firm grip on the absurdity of her life, and her persistence haunted him. Harry had tried to train himself to not think about Lily, but his sister had become a squatter in his nearly vacant conscience, refusing to be evicted. His guilt was not about the business of surrogacy-he paid a fortune to keep her in the home. Instead, he was tormented by the serrated truth that had lodged itself in him long ago. He wasn’t shelling out over a hundred thousand dollars a year because he loved Lily; he was doing it because he wished she were dead. These days, six figures seemed to be the going rate for Boddicker guilt.

The downstairs buzzer sounded. Harry walked to the door and pressed the entry button on the wall. Four months ago, in a sudden act of contrition, he’d arranged to have Lily brought to his place by one of the psychiatric nurses on her day off and had found that, compared to visiting the blanched desert of her room in the home, bringing Lily to his apartment had a temporary numbing effect on his angst. Recently he had scheduled another one-night sleepover-for today.

Harry opened the door and stepped back a few feet, listening to footsteps ascending the stairs. A twenty-something woman with black, scarecrow hair, wearing green culottes and high-tops, came into the doorway’s frame with a small, canvas overnight bag in hand.

“Hi, Mr. Jones.”

“Hi, Melissa.”

She turned, reaching a hand out to the unseen hall. “C’mon, Lily. Let’s go.”

A soft, satin voice spoke: “Time to go.”

“That’s right,” said the nurse, and pulled Lily into the apartment.

Drugs and madness had made his sister gray and small. She was dressed in the short-sleeved pink blouse and lilac pedal pushers he’d bought for her a few years ago. Lily’s elbows, wrist bones, and cheekbones stood out prominently beneath her opalescent skin, and as always now, when Harry saw her he had to remind himself that she was six years younger than him.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“Same,” said Melissa. “Fine. Right, Lily?”

There was a stillness about her; hardly anything seemed to move, as if the psychosis was a cancer that had dissolved all her muscles and tendons and nerves. She looked light as air-a giant, beautiful origami figure. When her deep-set blue eyes finally shifted and settled on Harry, they gazed at him without a hint of recognition.

Harry stepped toward his sister. Her gaze was fixed on the small hollow beneath his Adam’s apple. He raised a hand and tapped the top of her head with his knuckles three times. “Anybody home?”

Lily’s lips bent ever so slightly at his touch.

Harry glanced at Melissa. “We used to do that as kids.”

His sister walked to the wide picture window. “I like it here,” Lily said. “Everything moves so fast. I like seeing everything move so fast.”

The East River, barely disturbed by a ripple, carried a near-perfect reflection of Manhattan’s skyline upon it. On summer days like this the city seemed to have a shining twin that lay just beneath the water.

Lily leaned her forehead against the glass and put her palms up flat against it. She began to sing haltingly in light, dancing syllables.

“Way down… below the ocean…”

Harry joined in. “Where I want to be, she may be.”

Lily seemed deaf to his participation.

“Know that song, Melissa?” asked Harry. “‘Atlantis’?”

“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Any coffee?”

“In the pot. Make fresh if you like.”

Harry sat back down at the desk, and his chest rose and fell with a deep breath and a deeper sigh. He took the sheet of paper from the printer. As he read, he started nodding. He liked what he saw.

“Melissa, I may have to go out for a while.”

“Okay. We’ll be okay-Lily’s fine.”

Harry looked up with a tilted grin. “Yeah,” he said. “Lily’s fine.”

They sat at a booth in the diner on Columbus Avenue. Harry had been coming here since the 1980s, when he and his sister lived nearby. Now it was a twice-a-week breakfast place for him and Geiger. Harry would have his cheddar omelette and bacon, and Geiger would have black coffee. Harry would talk about the business-a tweak to the e-mail codec, new customized spyware, a database he’d hacked into-and Geiger would listen, sometimes responding with a one-sentence remark. Harry brought the Times, and when he was talked out they’d both read the paper. Harry never took the first section because Geiger read only the letters to the editor.

Harry emptied a third thimble of cream into his coffee to placate his stomach as Geiger opened the folder and extracted three sheets of paper. The first was the printout of the potential client’s website entry. His name, Richard Hall, and cell phone number were followed by his request:

I represent the owner of a private art collection. Two days ago a painting, a de Kooning, was stolen. We believe the thief is an art dealer who has served as a go-between in acquisitions for my client. My client feels that notifying law enforcement will not necessarily help recover the painting, so I have contacted you.

Harry watched Geiger’s gray eyes slide back and forth. Even after working for him for more than a decade, Harry knew little about Geiger. He’d pieced together a scant profile from random remarks-not from New York, a music lover, vegetarian, didn’t own a TV, lived somewhere in the city-but he had long ago stopped asking even the most casual personal questions. Whatever more particular sense of the man Harry had came from a tilt of Geiger’s head while listening, the speeds and patterns of his fluttering fingers, the occasional comment about a job. Harry had come to view the nature of their bond in the simplest of terms: need. Geiger had, for reasons Harry did not understand, entrusted him with a significant part of his life, and Harry had put the task of serving him at the empty center of his own. They were the strangest of partners-joined at the hip, light-years between them.

Richard Hall’s entry continued:

The man in question is David Matheson. He is 34 years old, resides at 64 West 75th Street, New York, New York, and his Soc. Sec. number is 379-11-6047. I have him under surveillance and would be able to “deliver” him, as I am told this is how the process works. It is likely that Matheson had a buyer in place before the theft, so it is crucial that this be dealt with quickly. I am authorized to pay an additional $200,000 should you retrieve information leading to the painting’s recovery. Please contact me by 2:00 p.m. or I will look for someone else. Sincerely, Richard Hall

Geiger put the first sheet down.

Harry grinned. “Not bad, huh? Would you do an asap?”

“One step at a time, Harry. We have a way of doing things.”

Harry nodded and stifled a frown and a burp.

The other pages were research on both the Jones and Richard Hall. Harry had hit a dozen different veins, as he liked to call them, while digging up information about David Matheson. He’d earned an undergraduate degree in international studies and a master’s in art history, and had worked for ten years as an art appraiser, consultant, and buyer. He was on watch lists in Greece and Egypt for meeting with suspected black marketeers in antiquities. He had lived in New York for thirteen years and was divorced; his only child, a son, lived with his mother in California. All Harry had on Hall was his birth date and Social, his honorable discharge from the National Guard in 1996, and thirteen years of FICA contributions from Elite Services Inc., an investigative outfit in Philadelphia.