Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“Give me your cell.”

Ray spat out a large dollop of blood and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. Hall dialed.

“Be ready, Mitch. Boddicker is coming out-with his sister.”

“Sister?” a voice said. “What happened in there?”

“Boddicker and Ray got into it, but later on that. I’ve got to get Ray’s face stitched up.”

“That bad? Jesus, Richie. We’re turning into the three fucking blind mice.”

“Stay close, Mitch-but not too,” Hall said. “And don’t get cute. You know he’s our best bet to get to Geiger, right?”

“Wanna know what I think? I think maybe somebody who keeps making wrong choices should stop sounding all the time as if he knows what the fuck he’s doing.”

Hall had wanted to punch the guy in the face for years, but he kept his sigh silent and hung up. Since the beginning of this clusterfuck, he’d been assuming that if things got much worse the three of them would end up at each other’s throats, but he couldn’t let it happen yet. He had another call to make, and for this one, he sat down in Harry’s chair and took a deep breath, letting it out in a measured release. He dialed and the call was picked up on the first ring.

“Yes?”

“It’s Hall. We have a problem, sir.”

“‘Problem’ is one of my least favorite words. What is ‘our’ problem?”

“We lost the kid-before we were able to get any information. Geiger has him.”

“ Has him?”

“Took him, sir.”

“Then find Geiger.”

“Yes, sir. That’s the plan. But we don’t know where Geiger is… yet.”

“Hall…”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if I should start being concerned. Yesterday you said you had Matheson lined up. Now this.”

“I understand, sir, but there’s no need to-”

“Find Geiger.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep me up to date. I don’t like hearing about ‘problems’ after the fact. If you foresee more complications, I want to know about them before they happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

The call ended. Hall could hear the sky starting to crack, and unless he turned this job around, it would surely fall. Ray, with a loud groan, staggered to his feet and grabbed the wall with one hand to keep from falling down.

“Muhjerfushinn-”

“Ray, shut the fuck up!”

The boy did not sleep for long. His slumber was full of twitches and mumbled noises, and then some dream demon chased him into consciousness. Geiger sat down beside him with the alcohol and a washcloth. He put a glass of water on the floor.

“I’m going to take the tape off. Tell me if it hurts too much.”

Ezra nodded, and Geiger began slowly peeling off an end of the tape around one eye, dabbing at the newly exposed skin every quarter of an inch. The boy flinched a few times but made no sound. Once Geiger got past the first eye-the left-the rest of the tape lifted more easily. The boy’s eyes were a striking shade of luminous green, the color of sea glass. There was lingering fear in them, and confusion, leaving no room for trust.

Geiger went to work on the strip across Ezra’s mouth while the boy stared at him warily. Geiger carefully pulled the tape free. Ezra’s cheeks and temples had two horizontal red streaks of chemical irritation. He ran his tongue across his lips a few times.

“Thirsty,” he croaked.

Geiger handed him the glass, and the boy drank it all down. They studied each other, like strangers sharing space at the start of a long trip.

“Are you gonna hurt me?” said Ezra.

His voice had a medium pitch, and Geiger heard a sporadic preteen squeak at its edges. But there also was an unexpected husky bottom to it; Geiger found the boy’s voice strangely soothing, like a cello at the heart of a string quartet.

“No,” said Geiger.

Ezra dragged a hand across his clammy forehead. “Really hot in here. Can you turn on the AC?”

“There’s no air-conditioning.”

“No AC? Then can you turn on a fan?”

“I don’t have a fan.”

“Don’t you get hot in here?”

“Yes.”

The boy tried to read Geiger’s face, looking for a hint of humor in the sharp features and stony, ash-colored eyes. He had good antennae for sarcasm. That was always his parents’ tone of choice, and they’d used it for banter, scolding, small talk, out-for-blood fighting. But Geiger seemed utterly straightforward.

“Well, can I take a shower?”

“Yes.”

Ezra raised a hand, gently touched his cheek, and winced. To Geiger, the gesture, the physical presence of another person here, seemed to have a magical effect, altering the place’s shape and shrinking its size. The boy’s palms came to rest beside his thighs, flat on the leather cushion, as if he needed the extra support to keep from toppling over sideways. His head rested back against the sofa, and his eyelids descended.

“Why do you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Your job.” He opened his eyes again. “That’s what you do, right? Hurt people?”

Geiger took the empty glass from Ezra and stood up. Then he realized he’d had no particular place in mind to go to. He turned back to the boy.

“Ezra, do you know that this is all about your father? That they wanted to find out if you know where he is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know where your father is?”

The boy cocked his head and shifted his skinny body. “How do I know you’re not one of them? Maybe you’re just pretending to be nice, so I’ll tell you stuff.”

The back door was on the north wall, in the kitchen. Geiger went to it and used a keypad to unlock it.

“Where you going?” asked the boy.

“Out back, for a smoke.”

Geiger walked out off the porch, into the yard. From beyond the fence the smell of engine oil reached him as he lit his cigarette and drew the smoke deep inside him. For the length of the breath, he saw the image of his father’s face above him, looking down, pearl-colored smoke snaking out of his nostrils. Until the predawn ride in the rental car, it was the only picture of his father Geiger had carried in his mental scrapbook. He knew now there would be more to come. The pages would fill up, independent of his desires or conscious powers.

“Can I come out?”

The boy was in the doorway. Geiger exhaled and his father’s face faded away.

“No,” he said. “Stay there.”

The world outside would keep oozing in through the cracks, and the past would usurp the present, gradually taking hold. Geiger could feel his pulse pounding at his insides, a mounting internal timpani, blood and organs like hammer and anvil. He started to stroll around the yard in his singular gait, fingers in a jig at his sides.

“Hey,” said Ezra. “Can I ask your name?”

“Geiger.”

“Like the counter?”

“Yes. Like the counter. Stop talking now. I need to think about some things.”

Geiger took one more suck on his cigarette, then let it fall and watched the butt’s last plume of smoke drift southward. He wanted to light another one.

Harry pressed the pay phone’s receiver tight to his ear so he could hear above the noise of the laundromat. His other hand held Lily’s; she seemed to have discovered a central beat in the jumble of the washers’ and dryers’ competing clatter and was swaying slightly to it. He could still feel the aftershocks rippling up from his hand and through his arm from when his Beretta had smashed into Ray’s face and something had given way.

“It’s me,” Harry said after the voice mail’s beep. “We have to talk. Really, really important. About Hall and Matheson and the kid and the whole fucking thing. I’m in a laundromat on Flatbush. Hall showed up at my place-I don’t know how-with another guy, trying to find out where you are and how to get the kid back. These guys are heavy lifters. Hall has battery acid in his veins. I’m on a pay phone because Hall may have tagged my cell, so don’t call my cell. It’s turned off. I’ll call again. Or you call me-please!”