Noah Boyd - The Bricklayer

‘It just seems like there would be easier ways to make a buck.’

‘Fair enough. It goes something like this. First you have to get fired, and then if you wait long enough, you start getting hungry. The rest of it just kind of falls into place.’

‘I would have thought that you’d have looked for something a little more… indoors.’

‘My father taught me when I was a kid. It’s how I got through college. And if you’re going to snoop around my personnel file, please get it right. Soviet history. It’s an important distinction in case whatever brings you here depends on my ability to see into the future,’ Vail said. ‘Thus…’ He waved his hand to encompass the surroundings. ‘Actually, I kind of like the work. It’s real. There’s something permanent about it, at least in human years. Handfuls of clay being transformed into complicated structures. And then, of course, it was the only house that the wolf couldn’t blow down. Besides, there are too many bosses indoors.’

‘So you’re never going to take a job that has a boss?’

‘There’s always a boss. The trick is to never take a job you can’t walk away from. Especially when the bosses get to be insufferable, which I think is now a federal law.’

‘Is that what you did with the FBI, walk away when you didn’t like the boss?’

‘Seems like you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.’

‘I’ve come with an offer that you can walk away from whenever you want.’

He pulled the trowel out of the mortarboard and picked up a brick. ‘Then consider me walked away.’

‘I wouldn’t be here unless we really needed your help.’

‘One of the things my departure from the Bureau taught me was that the FBI will never really need any one person.’

‘I’m impressed. You’ve maintained a grudge for five years. You rarely see that kind of endurance anymore.’

‘Thanks, but the credit really should go to my father. World-class scorn was the sum total of my inheritance. Enough of it can get you through anything.’ Vail started turning over the mortar on the board again.

‘Do you want it in writing? The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs the particular skills of Steven Noah Vail.’

‘You’ll find someone else.’

Kate stepped in front of him. ‘I know something about you that maybe you don’t even know.’

‘Oh good, I was wondering when we’d get around to managerial insight. Will I need something to write with?’

‘You have to do this.’ Her tone was not pleading but accusatory.

He held up the brick between them. ‘I do this so I don’t have to do anything.’

Her eyes carefully searched his face. ‘My God, you don’t know, do you? You really don’t know why you do these things. Why you have no choice but to say yes to me.’

‘In that case, no.’

‘Stop being so Vail for a minute.’

‘Why is “no” such a difficult concept for women? You demand we understand it the first time, every time.’

‘Do you know why you stopped that bank robbery?’ Ignoring her, Vail spread a bed of mortar and pushed the brick into it. ‘Because no one else could,’ she went on. ‘Everyone else in the world is running around searching for their own self-importance, and you’re cruising around ignoring yours.’ She smiled. ‘And let’s admit it, if you’re really that into revenge, what could be better than having the Bureau come crawling to you to fix some problem that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t?’

Vail stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time. He turned and went back to work on the chimney. For the next half hour neither of them spoke. She sat down on the edge of the roof and watched him. There was an economy of movement to his work that she supposed was necessary for any task so repetitive, but still there was something about the way he did it that she found intriguing. The way his large, veined hands flipped over the bricks and found the right alignment instinctually. The way when he applied mortar, it was always the exact amount needed, never dropping any, never needing to add any. The flow never interrupted. How he was transforming perfectly rectangular bricks into a perfectly round chimney.

The more she watched him, the more she realized he was working faster than he normally would. If the work was as rewarding as he had said, there should have been an occasional appraising touch or at least a glance when he finished a course, but instead he immediately reached for the next brick. She couldn’t tell if he was just angry with her or if he wanted to get done so that he could be rid of her for good.

After the last brick was tapped into place and the joint scraped flush, Vail flicked the excess mortar off the trowel and then scraped both its sides on the edge of the board. She could finally see some reaction on his face. Even though the trowel was clean, he kept stropping it against the board absentmindedly. ‘What exactly is it that needs fixing?’

‘I’m sorry, I am not allowed to tell you.’

‘Who is?’

‘The director.’

‘ The director?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘What is it that you think I can do that the other eleven thousand agents can’t?’

‘Most important? Be discreet. Last month’s little bank robbery gave us a pretty good indication that you’re not interested in getting your name in the papers.’

‘And less important?’

‘You had a certain reputation in Detroit.’

‘For?’

‘Hunting men.’

‘So you want me to find someone without anyone knowing that the FBI’s looking for him.’

‘It’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the main concerns.’

‘Other than getting to polish my neglected self-esteem, what’s in this for me?’

‘It’s completely negotiable.’

‘Are you saying that as a deputy assistant director or as a woman?’ As her face reddened slightly, the scar on her cheekbone started to glow white. He smiled. ‘That’s enough of an answer for now. When?’

‘I came in a Bureau plane. It’s waiting at Midway.’

Vail picked up a ten-gallon bucket and started shoveling the unused mortar into it. ‘Give me a half hour to clean up.’

Vail’s pickup pulled up in front of his apartment with Kate’s Bureau car close behind. He walked back to her as she opened the door. ‘I’ll make it as quick as I can.’

She got out. ‘Can I use your phone?’

‘You don’t have a cell?’

‘I’d rather use a hard line.’

‘I wasn’t expecting company.’

Kate wondered how bad it was up there. She found herself intrigued at the prospect of peeking into Vail’s personal life. ‘I’ll keep my eyes closed.’

Vail opened the door and let Kate walk in ahead of him. The small apartment was not what she expected. It seemed newer, better constructed than the rest of the building. The walls were unpainted Sheetrock. The taped seams were visible but had been smoothed with the expert touch of a trowel. In stark contrast, the dark hardwood floors looked like they had been recently refinished and were buffed to a high sheen. The furniture was sparse, and the few tables and shelves scattered around held a couple dozen different sizes and types of sculpture, mostly the kind that were found at garage or estate sales or dusty way-out-of-the-way antique shops. Strangely, all the human figures were of the headless variety and had apparently been purchased for the detail of the torsos. She wondered if there was another reason. ‘I’m still working on the walls, but I guess that’s obvious.’

On a worktable at the front window, to take advantage of the natural light, was an almost complete sculpture of a male torso formed by hundreds of thumb-size smudges of clay. ‘You live here alone?’