Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

Harry said nothing, his eyes locked on the screen.

“Hey, mister? Hear me?”

Harry looked up, molars fused. One word escaped through his teeth. “Yeah?”

“You’re making too much noise.”

“Was I? Sorry.”

“So no more yelling,” said the counter guy. “People don’t want to hear that. Okay?”

Harry placed his palms on the counter and took a shaky breath.

“I heard you,” he said. “No more yelling. I got it.”

“Okay,” said the counter guy, and then he leaned toward Lily, who sported a coating of crumbs from her lips to her lap. “And please, lady. Can you try and be a little neater?” His finger directed her nonexistent attention to a sign on the wall that read, PLEASE KEEP FOOD OFF THE COMPUTERS. He nodded at her. “Okay, lady? Thanks very much.”

Harry rose from his chair and came nose to nose with the counter guy. He was suddenly so angry that he felt as light as a feather, almost giddy with malice.

“Listen, man,” he said. “I’ll finish soon as I can, without another sound, and then we’ll leave. But do not talk to her.”

The counter guy framed his response with a faint, inquisitive smile. “Are you threatening me?” he asked. “Because, mister, you don’t look like you should be threatening anybody.”

Harry’s hand went up to his face-he’d forgotten about its battered state. His rush died away instantly, replaced by a wave of confusion and shame.

The laptop called to him with another merry ding.

GGGG: you still there? huh?

Hearing the computer’s chime, Lily started singing. “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock…”

As she sang, only her wide, pale lips moved, and her frozen stare and immobile body were bizarrely at odds with the lyric.

The counter guy looked at Lily and then turned back to Harry. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I said never mind her, okay?”

But some synapse in Lily was misfiring, and she began singing louder. As her volume rose so did she, standing up with a touch of a wobble.

“She high on something?” asked the counter guy.

“Yeah, high on life,” said Harry. “Now I’m just going to finish up the IM and then get out of here, okay?”

Lily, still singing, came to the end of the song and raised both arms high. “That’s the jingle bell rock!”

This last burst took something out of her, and, reeling, she flapped her hands for balance. They came down on the counter, spilling Harry’s coffee and spraying the laptops.

“Okay, that’s it!” said the counter guy. “You’ve both got to leave.”

As the man hustled away for a rag, Harry grabbed Lily and shoved her back down on her stool.

“Stay! Don’t move!”

Frantic with worry as he waited for Harry’s response, Ezra stood up and stepped away from the computer. He wanted to stomp his feet and yell, but if he did he might wake the monster in the closet. Ezra didn’t believe Geiger was a monster, but he was certain there was one living inside him. Ezra had felt its wrath when he’d watched it bring Geiger to his knees, and he didn’t want to rouse it again.

Trying to contain his panic, Ezra wandered away from the desk and spied the two bags lying where Geiger had dropped them near the CD racks. He picked up the bag with the Burger King logo, stuck a hand inside, and took out a burger. In two bites he’d devoured half of it, and his head drooped with narcotic pleasure. Then he snapped upright and gave a eureka cry.

“Receipt!”

He tore the Burger King bag apart, French fries flying everywhere.

“Receipt… c’mon, receipt!”

But there was none. He snatched up the drugstore bag and shook it upside down. The bottle of Advil fell out, and behind it came a small white slip of paper, drifting slowly toward the floor. Ezra snatched the receipt out of the air and scanned the printed data.

“Yes!”

He lunged for the desk.

The counter guy started soaking up the mess with a cloth.

“I said leave, didn’t I?”

“Give me a break, man,” said Harry. “Five minutes. That’s all I need. She won’t do it again.”

“Leave.”

“Three minutes.”

“Now,” the counter guy said, and to put an exclamation on the command, he sent a pointed finger down toward the laptop’s power button. Harry’s hand closed around the guy’s forearm and stopped him. He knew he was a clenched fist from disaster.

The counter guy stared at him open-mouthed. “Let go of my arm or I’ll call the cops.”

“Let me send one more IM, man,” Harry said. “ One more.”

“Just get the hell out of here-and take Miss Jingle Bells with you.”

The guy was practically yelling now, but his words were punctuated by a cheerful ding, as another message appeared on the laptop.

GGGG: im near la vida discount drugs at 1474 amsterdam!

Harry reached for the keyboard, but now the counter guy’s finger found its mark and landed on the power button. The screen went black.

“Out! Both of you!”

Harry took Lily’s hand and pulled her off the stool. They started for the door, the hobbled leading the helpless. But Harry was elated; he had an address, a place to go.

Ezra stood at Geiger’s desk, reading the IM’s new declaration.

STICKLER has signed off and cannot receive messages offline.

He retrieved the half-eaten burger and sat down again. The cat came by and curled up in his lap. Ezra fed himself with one hand, stroked the cat with the other, and refused to cry.

Mitch’s coffee was cold. He drank coffee day and night, but he hated it cold. When the heat was gone, something happened to the milk and three sugars that left a coating on his tongue, making him scrape it back and forth against the edges of his front teeth.

He poured the coffee out the window and checked the trace locator. Boddicker and his sister were still in the diner, setting a record for the world’s longest breakfast. Or maybe Boddicker was spiking his coffee and getting an early start on happy hour. From the look of him, he’d taken a few hits when he’d gotten into the ring with Ray.

Years ago, when Ray had first come aboard, Mitch had sized him in five minutes: big dick, tiny brain, no rearview mirror whatsoever. If you cracked his skull open you’d find IRREGULAR stamped on his frontal lobe. But Mitch had no problem with Ray-the guy had the instincts of a fart, but he knew how to do what he had to do.

Though Mitch trusted his read on Ray, he still found Hall baffling after all these years. Mitch looked at life as a game of football, X’s and O’s on a chalkboard, and he read people’s actions the same way an offensive or defensive coordinator tries to decipher and react to the other team’s schemes. With Hall, the X’s and O’s said one thing, but they didn’t always tell the truth. As often as not, the whys of Hall’s behavior and decisions completely eluded him.

Hall was not the sum of his parts. He was far from a tight-ass, but he dressed like one, button-down head to toe. He told a great joke, but rarely laughed at anyone else’s. He usually went by the book, but he showed obvious contempt for it. He always had your back, but he clearly resented having to watch it. And he was very good at his job but seemed to dislike doing it. Hall was the anti-Ray, and to Mitch that meant he couldn’t be trusted.

Mitch reached into a knapsack on the floor, took out a Nitro-Tech protein bar, and started to nibble. He never went anywhere without his Nitros. In his business you could never count on getting a meal, and who knew what’d be in it when you did? There was too much shit in the world-in the food, the water, the papers, the movies, people’s bodies and heads. Mitch worked hard to eat right and stay lean. Half a dozen times a day he’d grab a pinch of flesh at his waist with his thumb and forefinger just to see if he was getting soft.