Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“You see, son? Not the body. The mind. ”

Geiger became aware that Mr. Memz had finished his recitation and was now sitting back in his chair. With his eyes on Geiger, he flicked his butt away and offered up the smile of a charming lunatic. Geiger took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and held it out to Mr. Memz, who took the money and kissed it.

“Question, BT.”

“What?”

“During my splendid performance, you weren’t looking at the page and following along. So how do you know I got it right?”

“I’ve read it before. Many times.”

“Why didn’t you say so, man?”

“Because I’d forgotten.”

He started away. It was a downhill journey, and the spinning earth tugged at him. The heat rising off the street turned the view into a rippling, molten curtain. Two men at the entrance to the auto body shop wielded clamorous pneumatic tools, loosening bolts on the wheel hubs of a jacked-up, blood-red Magnum. The sun made the sweat on their bare mahogany backs a glistening polish.

A flash of light pulled at Geiger’s eyes. He turned and saw a silver Lexus with tinted windows cruising slowly up the street. Geiger crouched down behind a parked car and watched the Lexus pass by and then pull over at Mr. Memz’s post. The driver’s window came down and smoke drifted out from inside the car. A hand came out holding up a six-inch square card, its glossy surface glinting in the sun. Mr. Memz leaned forward in his chair and looked closely at the card. His lips moved, but Geiger couldn’t hear what he said.

The dark glass slid up and the Lexus pulled away. Geiger remembered that Hall’s insurance card said he drove a Lexus, but he couldn’t remember what color. His memory wouldn’t give up the information. He watched the car turn onto Amsterdam and drive out of sight, and then he moved quickly to Mr. Memz, leaning down to his ear from behind.

“Mr. Memz.”

The vet seized up in a flinch as if someone had hollered, “Incoming!” He twisted around.

“Fuck, man! Don’t be coming up on me like that!”

“I need to ask you something,” Geiger said.

Mr. Memz’s back rose and fell with a deep breath. “BT, I think I liked you better when you kept your mouth shut.”

“The Lexus. What did the driver want?”

“He showed me a photograph of somebody who looked a lot like you. Asked if I’d seen the guy around and said his name was Geiger. That your name, BT? Geiger?”

Where did they get a photograph of him? Geiger felt his ruptured seams being tested again. The more the world poured into him, the wider they stretched.

“What did you tell him?”

Mr. Memz’s thumbnail raked his beard. “‘I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades.’”

“What?”

“Article Four, man. Code of Conduct. You don’t give up your own.” Mr. Memz smiled. “I told the guy I’d never seen you.”

As Geiger rose, he saw a double image of Mr. Memz that was gauzy at its edges. He knew what it meant, and what was on the way.

“Thank you,” he said, and headed for home.

“Hey, BT,” Mr. Memz called out. “Dude’s got sniper’s eyes! I know ’em when I see ’em, man, so watch your skinny ass!”

As soon as he entered the code to the front door lock and stepped inside, Geiger saw the boy sitting at the desk. Three of the black binders were spread open before him.

Ezra slowly turned to Geiger, his eyes ablaze. “This is what you do? This? ”

The pressure in Geiger’s head was almost unbearable, but he had the presence of mind to reach for the keypad and punch in the interior code.

“What’s wrong with you?” cried the boy, rising from the chair. He was frantic, panicky, his body swaying and his arms waving, like a jack-in-the-box set free of its coil. The boy’s movements left stuttering trails across Geiger’s vision.

“Don’t talk now,” Geiger said. His voice reached him from somewhere far away. The visitation was very close now; the tiny lights had come calling. The textbooks called it the “aura”-a rare, warping prognostic of the migraine.

“If this is what you do, then why didn’t you do it to me?”

The boy was yelling now, the volume ramping up the pitch of his voice and whetting it. His words cut like a knife.

“Don’t… talk,” Geiger said.

Geiger started toward him, but the movement triggered a vertiginous light-headedness and he stopped. He heard his own gathering breath; it roared in his ears as if coming from a stranger standing behind him. He dropped the bags and turned for the CD rack. He’d need the music before he went into the closet. He tried to focus on the countless shimmering jewel cases, but the slightest shift of eye in socket rendered the titles on their spines indecipherable. The aura’s magnitude was beyond his past experiences-the degree of distortion, the recasting of light into barbed stars, the conversion of symmetry into chaos and flux. When he reached toward a shelf, the assault began, an incendiary device going off in his skull, near the crest, sending white-hot tendrils down toward the backs of his eyes.

But Ezra, his fear running wild, was not finished. “Why did you save me?” he shouted.

“Stop!” Geiger yelled, and then the migraine hit him full force. He howled and fell to his knees as if smitten.

Ezra stumbled back against the desk. “What… what’s the matter with you?!”

Swaying, Geiger grabbed hold of his temples. He made a noise that might have been a word.

“I’m sorry!” said the boy. “I’m sorry! Please don’t flip out on me!”

Geiger started crawling for the sanctuary of the closet, his fingers feeling the smooth marquetry, his eyes shut tight to keep the light at bay. He extended his right hand until it brushed against the closet door, then turned the cold brass knob and dragged himself inside. He pulled the door closed and let the darkness come.

Gradually he became aware that Ezra was calling to him.

“Geiger! Say something!”

“Music,” Geiger croaked. “Put on the music.”

He lay in the dark, his right forearm a pillow for his head, his left arm holding his knees up close to his chest. His brain was on fire. Something had been breached. The pain was breathtaking, and now it had a face. Geiger could see it: a phantom gaining flesh and blood.

Then he heard music. A single strand of it-elegant, melancholy, consoling. He closed his eyes. He could see the colored puddles of sound, taste the notes, feel them falling on him like a cold rain, cooling the fire in his mind.

When Ezra had heard Geiger’s plea for music, he had dashed for the CD rack but then swerved to the couch when he caught sight of his violin case. Now he stood at the closet door, his trembling fingers drawing the bow across the instrument’s strings. Nestled beneath his chin, the violin was more than a comfort; it felt like crucial ballast, the weight of something known and good that could prevent him from being tossed about by the maelstrom all around him. He closed his eyes, and as he played, there came a flicker of understanding-he, too, needed the music to ease the pain and take him to his own place of peace.

Harry had always steered clear of Internet cafes. He didn’t want somebody sitting next to him, craning a neck. And he didn’t trust these places-even if they had online security, it would be useless. But desperate times called, so here he sat at a counter in Charlotte’s Web Cafe, at one of its six laptops. Lily sat to his left, her spindly fingers picking walnut crumbs off a scone, holding each up close to her eyes like a forty-niner admiring a shiny, newfound nugget.

Outside, the sun was a shimmering white wafer turning the city into a skillet. It was the kind of heat that turns a driver’s honk into an insult, a frown into a threat. But the cafe was well air-conditioned, which made Harry inclined to forgive the low-fat jazz that simpered from the wall speakers. And the coffee he’d bought from the Asian guy working behind the counter wasn’t bad either.