Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“Wake up, Ray!”

Ray’s eyelids rose to half-mast.

“Ray, I need your eyes, goddamnit!”

Ray sat straight and stared out his window.

“I’m up, I’m up.”

Harry froze when he heard someone call his name.

“Hey, are you Harry?”

When he and Lily had gotten into the taxi outside the internet cafe, Harry had told the cabbie to drive until the meter read ten dollars. He had thirteen bucks left and figured he’d better hold on to a few, so at 116th Street the driver pulled over, and Harry walked the last eighteen blocks with Lily in tow. His knee was so swollen he thought he could hear it swish with each step.

“Harry? Geiger’s Harry?”

Harry turned around. “Yeah?”

Mr. Memz jabbed a finger toward Amsterdam Avenue. “He’s up there. On the corner. Better double-time it, man.”

Harry looked up the block and saw Geiger stepping off the sidewalk toward a cab that was pulling up next to him. Geiger opened the back door, and Ezra hustled over and climbed inside.

“Geiger!” Harry shouted, as Geiger slid into the backseat and closed the door. “Geiger!”

Geiger gave the address to the cabbie’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “And take Convent to Morningside. It’s faster.”

“Wait,” Ezra said. “Listen.”

The boy jabbed at the window button. The glass slid down and he tilted an ear.

“I thought I heard…”

“Heard what?”

There it was again, faint but clear.

“Geiger!”

“That!”

Geiger stuck his head out the window and peered down the street. Two figures were trudging up the sidewalk toward them. He got out of the cab.

Harry, pulling Lily up the slight hill, was a third of a block away, limping, hollering, and waving. Geiger watched them move into the street to cut down the angle to the cab and then saw a silver flash behind Harry at the bottom of the hill. A car had turned onto the street.

“Stay here,” Geiger told Ezra. He started down toward Harry, moving faster with every step.

“Come on, Harry,” he said. “Move!”

Harry saw Geiger and stopped. He bent over, hands on thighs, panting heavily. Geiger arrived in a jog and picked Lily up in his arms.

“It’s Hall, Harry. Run!” Geiger started back to the cab with Lily.

Still bent over at the waist, Harry swiveled and looked behind him. The Lexus was coming up the street at a crawl.

“Fuck… me.”

He pushed all the air out of his lungs and lifted himself upright.

Mr. Memz, watching the show, saw Harry start hobbling forward as fast as he could. Then he turned west and observed the slow advance of the silver Lexus.

“Jesus H. Christ, here we go.” He tugged at his ponytail, his head swiveling back and forth, gauging distances. “C’mon, man,” he shouted at Harry. “Faster.”

Halfway to the corner, Harry’s knee buckled and slammed into the asphalt.

Mr. Memz winced and then looked back at the Lexus. “He’s never gonna make it,” he muttered.

Grabbing his crutch, Mr. Memz stood up.

If Ray hadn’t slipped back into a semi-nod, Hall wouldn’t be driving so slowly. But as he worked his way up the block, he had to check both sides of the street. Finally he reached over and hammered Ray’s chest with a backhanded fist. Ray’s bloodshot eyes sprang open.

“Stay awake! I mean it, Ray. Drop your end and I will send you to your fucking reward. Got it?”

Ray grunted in reply.

Hall saw them just as Geiger deposited Lily in the cab and turned back for Harry, who was twenty feet short of the taxi. Hall’s foot pounded the accelerator as his hand felt for the gun in his belt. With a rich growl, the powerful car sped up the hill.

Hall’s mind quickly scanned scenarios. Run them over? Pull up between them and the cab? Make a big show with the gun? And if a cop shows up?

He glanced at Ray. “You’re on Geiger. I go for the kid. He’s got to be in the cab.”

Ray nodded. The car’s speed and the scent of vengeance had kicked him into a higher gear. “And I want Harry, too,” he said.

As Hall turned back to the street, he saw a figure dressed in camouflage step out from between two parked cars. Leaning on a crutch, standing not a hundred feet away, the man turned toward the oncoming car and seemed astonished to see it.

Hall slammed on the brakes. Ray, unbelted, went thudding face-first into the dashboard. His howl was almost as loud as the shriek of rubber clawing at asphalt as the Lexus held its line, barreling head-on for Mr. Memz.

“Motherfucker!” shouted Hall, practically standing on the brake pedal.

At the last second, Mr. Memz fell backward, his crutch clattering, just as the Lexus came to a halt.

Hall was looming over Mr. Memz before he could catch his breath.

“You blind? Huh?”

Hall bent down and grabbed Mr. Memz by an arm.

“Get up! Up! ”

Mr. Memz pulled his arm free. “Back off, Jack! I think maybe I broke something.” He let out a loud moan and snuck a look uphill.

“Go,” Geiger said to the cabbie from the front seat. “Fast.”

The driver hit the gas, and they bolted into traffic. Harry closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to even out the pain. Then he leaned forward and looked across Lily at Ezra.

“You’re Ezra.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Harry. We’ve met, sort of. This is Lily, my sister. She doesn’t really talk.”

Ezra nodded. Nothing seemed strange to him any longer. “Hi, Lily,” he said.

Lily turned to him, one child’s gaze meeting another’s.

“I know lots of songs,” she said. “Do you?”

“Well, I…” Ezra paused. “Yeah, I know lots of songs, too.”

“That’s because we’re all born with a million songs inside us-and we know them all by heart.”

Harry turned to her, his mouth opening as if to say something, then closing again.

“But as we get older,” Lily continued, “we forget them. Every day we forget some, and every day we get a little sadder. But children haven’t forgotten too many yet.”

She closed her eyes and settled her head on Ezra’s shoulder.

When he opened the door, Corley was startled to find not only Geiger but also a boy of eleven or twelve with symmetrical pink stripes marking his face; a skinny, bedraggled man with a discolored contusion on his left temple; and a delicate woman whose unfocused, darting gaze immediately suggested that she suffered from significant psychological problems.

“We need to come in,” Geiger said.

The gathering at his door was so bizarre, and the wash of despair and weariness coming off them so strong, that Corley didn’t know how to respond.

“Geiger,” he said. “Who are all these-”

“Martin, we need to come in.”

Geiger’s voice was unsettling: the timbre of it and the crests of inflection were slightly different from the smooth, nearly atonal speech Corley was accustomed to hearing. He looked more closely at Geiger and saw it in his eyes. Something had happened.

“Come in,” Corley said, opening the door wide and waving at the two oversized leather chairs and the two beige sofas in his living room. “Please, sit down. Anywhere.”

Ezra chose a chair. Harry planted Lily on a sofa and collapsed beside her with a groan. Geiger remained standing.

Corley followed his guests into the room. “I’m Martin Corley. I’m a psychiatrist.”

Harry’s head snapped upright. “Wait a sec. You’re Geiger’s psychiatrist?” He looked at Geiger. “You see a shrink?”

“This is Harry,” said Geiger, “and Ezra and Lily, Harry’s sister.”

“Well,” said Corley, “this is certainly a very unusual situation. I think we can all agree on that.”