Jack O'Connell - Wireless

She nods. She feels bad for the old man. The topography of his world is changing as quickly as he says and no amount of reassurance from her can hide the truth.

“Still,” Hannah says, “I don’t see the percentage. If Chak wants to be a long-term player, and we know he does, he’s not going to sanction random violence. Especially not outside of the Park. Whacking the crusading priest doesn’t ensure your stability. This kind of thing is going to be on the front page of the Spy for weeks. You know Welby and Bendix and the Council are going to have to make some noise and slap someone hard.”

Dr. Cheng walks back to the organ and toes a foot pedal distractedly.

He says, “Chak would sooner have the Hyenas attack me than this Father Todorov.”

“Then the Hyenas simply lost their heads or acted on their own for reasons we can only guess—”

“In which case we’ll know by tomorrow. Chak will need to send a signal that he can police his own territory. He’ll round up a few of their low-level soldiers, whether they were involved with the priest or not. He’ll leave them hanging by their feet from the streetlamps on Voegelin Avenue.”

“Then again,” Hannah says, “if the Hyenas didn’t torch Todorov—”

“Then perhaps someone wants us to believe that they did.”

“That’s your theory?” Hannah says, only partially a question.

Dr. Cheng doesn’t respond.

Hannah turns back toward the railing and looks out at a life-sized Christ figure suspended by metal chains from the ceiling, hanging on a silver metal cross over the marble altar below. Even from this distance she can make out the silver beads that represent droplets of blood from the hands and feet, from the wound in the side, from the crown of thorns biting into the rim of the head. It’s a particularly gruesome crucifix, a haunting monument to an endless and unjustified agony.

She wonders for a second if Fr. Todorov had a chance to glimpse the dying metal Christ in the air above him before the priest’s heart exploded from shock and incalculable pain.

She turns away. There’s no test the lab techs can run to answer her question. No way to analyze the seared eyeball, to dip it in some beaker of chemicals and reveal a trace image of a crucified redeemer.

Hannah waits a few seconds, then moves over to Dr. Cheng, pulls his coat closed over his chest, and takes him by the arm. She starts to steer him to the exit, walking slowly, listening, uncomfortably, to the old man’s wheeze.

At the top of the spiral stairway, Dr. Cheng turns to her and says, “Did I tell you Gennaro Pecci wouldn’t take my call?”

DeForest Road looks like someone’s chronic dream of suburbia. In fact, it’s located completely within the city, ten minutes from the heart of downtown. It’s just that this cookie-cutter design seems so familiar — row on row of identically sized lots, graced with tract houses, three-bedroom ranches in pastel colors, lined up, a lesson in uniformity.

Crouched low in the shrubbery, Speer chews on nicotine gum and thinks the whole street could be the exterior set of an endless situation comedy. Clean-cut kids hysterically agonizing over the new dent in Dad’s bumper. The zany neighbor with the get-rich-quick scheme. The door-to-door salesman hawking an explosive vacuum cleaner. A millennium of story lines about familial high jinks in the land of God.

If anyone spots him, Speer will take the offensive, flash the badge, bark from behind clenched teeth, roll the eyes of the weary protector. DEA, dickhead, get lost, there’s a crack house right here on Primrose Lane . Let the bastard go home and wonder which neighbor is the invader, which fellow traveler has breached the system. Why do they value it so much? Why do they give their lives over to streets and houses like this? Why do they break their backs to dig into the bosom of a dreamy laugh track only they can hear?

Speer spits out the gum and inserts another piece, lets his saliva turn it moist before he starts to chew. He knows he should have the answer, that the answer should be instinctual, not open to analysis or recall, but simply felt and understood, a reflex, an instantaneous response. The answer should be primal. And the fact that it isn’t is the key to what’s wrong with Speer’s whole life.

They want these streets, these houses, these nests of family life , for a sense of order. Speer should feel this more directly than any of the residents around him. He’s a guardian of order, an overseer. That’s what the Bureau was all about. That’s what Mr. Hoover’s life was all about. These days they try to taint his name, say he had aberrant desires and that he used the Bureau for his own political ends. Beyond being untrue, this has nothing to do with the fact that there are basic rules that must be upheld and enforced. And they’re more precious in the field of communication than anywhere else, as far as Speer is concerned.

And yet, he’s not a part of that network of family life. He’s been married twice. Both unions lasted less than a year and the last one involved a modicum of violence. Neither marriage produced children. For the past six months, Speer has lived in a basement apartment that holds just the faintest trace of a sweet and sour sewer aroma. Speer’s parents are both dead. He has a brother somewhere in the wilds of Manitoba that he hasn’t seen or spoken with in five years.

There are acquaintances, faces that come to him from the set routines of daily life — a waitress, a mechanic, the guy who sells the Spy at the newsstand. But for quite a while now, there have been no friends, and certainly no romance. He’s become a moving recluse, a mobile hermit. A man who defines himself purely by his job.

So, it’s nights like this that keep Speer going, that provide him with a synthetic replacement for the meaning that he assumes is found on streets like this one, in houses like these little ranches. A year ago, the job was a moderate consolation. Tonight it’s everything. It’s the reason to make the bed, drink the coffee, launder the shirts, brush the teeth, pull air into the lungs.

A funny thing about the lungs: Speer quit smoking the day before the last wife, Margie, bolted town with his ’78 Monte Carlo and the whole of their passbook account. If he was going to go back to the unfiltered Camels, it would have been in that crucial five minutes after he read the note she left on the back of an envelope on the kitchen table. Instead, he turned his withdrawal into one more test of will, and in his weaker moments, he played one of those silent, cosmic-wager games. He told himself that if he got through one more day without a smoke, Margie would change her mind and come home. Now he’s hooked on the nicotine gum.

He walks out of the bushes, crosses the street at a normal, unhurried pace, moves into the backyard, and pulls from his pocket a glass cutter and suction cup. He squeezes in behind an azalea bush, finds the kitchen window, uses his elbow to smash in one of the panes, then reaches inside the dark of the kitchen, unlatches the lock, and slides the window open.

He pulls himself inside and there’s this weird, short drop to the sink that he didn’t expect. The seat of his pants gets wet from a small pool of soapy water. He swings his legs off the counter, lowers himself to the floor, and immediately pulls a long-handled flashlight from his coat and snaps it on. He plays the beam around the room twice and the kitchen seems like a stage that’s been abandoned by actors. Speer cups a hand over his mouth, focuses the beam on the kitchen set, lets out a shocked and hand-obscured “Son of a bitch.”

He walks over to the table and stoops slightly to touch one of the chairs. It’s like a set piece for the Snow White story. It’s a miniature, a kid’s play set. But it’s top quality. Nothing plastic or veneer. Heavy, solid wood. He lifts a miniature chair with one hand, guesses at the weight. The kitchen table is only about two feet off the ground. Then he notices that the knickknacks on the walls — the spice rack, the framed needlepoint saying — are all hung at about his belt level. Waist level.