Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

“I’ll show you to the door now.”

“What’s the story, Ike? You call Rourke now? You tell him there’s a new problem?”

“I’m not feeling too well, really …”

“You’re going a little green in the face there, Ike. How good an actor are you?”

“I don’t, I don’t, I have to …”

He bolts out of his rocker and runs across the room to the stacks. He darts into a random aisle and starts to hyperventilate.

Eva comes after him slowly and when she finds him, her voice is like that of an older, calmer doctor, reassuring, soothing, a wife’s voice of hope and control and protection.

“It’s all right, Ike,” she begins, measured, unrushed, slightly above a whisper. “Just sit on the floor here. That’s it, down on the floor, okay, good, now lower your head a little, to your knees, just like that, fine, you’re okay, you’re fine, slow down now, let the air come in, there you go.”

She ends up on her knees, holding his head against her breast, stroking his damp forehead, pushing back the hair, creating a rhythm with the calm sweep of her palm against his skull. His breath begins to come normally and after a few more minutes, he raises his head from her chest and mouths the word “sorry.”

They both lean back and sit, cross-legged, campfire style, facing each other in the quiet of the narrow aisleway.

“Something’s happened,” Ike says.

Eva just nods.

“I don’t know anything. I swear to you. But I can’t think of any way to prove that to you.”

“Neither can I,” Eva says.

Ike reaches across the space between them and takes her hand. He holds it lightly, lets his thumb run over the skin, the ridges of the knuckles.

“Tell me anyway,” he says.

The thing I hate most,” Lenore says, “is when I start breaking my own rules. And that’s what’s happening here. I vowed I wasn’t going to start having conversations with you, okay? I don’t want us to get to know each other. I’m going to get very tense if this continues.”

Woo gives the same smile she’s seen on his face too many times already. It never varies and it’s one of the most prominent items on the list of reasons she dislikes him.

They’re back in Bangkok Park, back inside the confines of the Barracuda, and though that’s exactly where Lenore wants to be, it also makes her uneasy. Standard procedure after a shooting would be for her to be relieved at once of any and all field work and start filing endless forms concerning her every move, submitting to hours of internal-affairs interviews, probably having to do ten hours or more with the department shrink for the relief of post-shooting trauma.

In fact, she feels no trauma at all. She has replayed her actions and decided she acted correctly. Zarelli was in the line of fire. Vicky had to be disarmed. She accomplished her objective. It proved to be a fatal shoot. There’s little control over these things. Though she didn’t ask, Woo has said that the odds are the dosage of Lingo running through Vicky’s body would have proved lethal anyway. If additional consolation is needed, she knows she can consider the fact that, given Vicky’s current life-style and environment, her life expectancy couldn’t have been gauged any higher than another year or so. Eighteen months tops.

Ten minutes after Vicky’s body is loaded into the ambulance and hauled off for autopsy, Dennison is on the radio with Mayor Welby, of all people. Then Miskewitz gets on the horn and, as Dennison raises his eyebrows so high they could tear, the lieutenant tells Lenore to “proceed with the investigation.”

So she and Woo end up back in the Park, staring out at the rear of the Hotel Penumbra from her favorite alley, waiting, as long as is necessary, for Mingo Bouza to show his face.

“Very simply,” says Woo through his smile, “all I’m attempting to ask you is if you’ve given thought to the consequences of your actions.”

Lenore slouches in her seat, her eyes glued to the Penumbra’s garage. “There’s something about you that’s not right,” she says to Woo. “You just witnessed me blow away a seventeen-year-old girl …”

“Yes.”

“ … and you want to know, your big question is, if I’ve thought about what I’m doing bribing Little Max the snitch with some drawings by some local cartoonist. This is what you’re asking me?”

“Exactly.”

“Jesus Christ, you are a goddamn idiot.”

“You are so hostile.”

“That’s right, that’s correct, and you shouldn’t taunt a hostile person. The danger is enormous.”

“I’m not trying to taunt you. I’m curious if you’ve carried your actions to their logical ends.”

“My actions concerning Max and the drawings?”

“That’s right. I’m looking for an insight into the police mind …”

“Oh, what is this shit? ‘Police mind’ …”

“I’m sure this will sound trite to you, but, in fact, didn’t your enticing Max with the artwork constitute a corruption of innocence, something you hate Mr. Cortez for?”

Lenore can’t believe what she’s hearing. She shakes her head and turns to him. “Woo, I have to know this, you’re thought of as a bright guy, right? You’re a freaking expert in your field, correct? But I sit here and I listen to you and, for Christ sake, to me you’re as dumb as mud. Really. This isn’t just a way of insulting you. This is how I feel.”

Woo isn’t upset at all. “Continue,” he says.

“First off, who said I hated Cortez? Did someone hear that come out of my mouth? Mr. Expert on Language? Did you hear those words? Did I fall asleep behind the wheel here and say this and I’m not aware of it? No, sorry, never said it. You’ve made a huge assumption — Lenore hates Cortez — enormous goddamn assumption. Now, beyond that, you, of all people, again, Mr. Freaking Language, Dr. Language, right, you say I’m a corrupter of innocence. Listen, excuse me, I’ve got to say this — Mr. Asshole, okay, Little Max may be young, I’d say he’s fifteen or so, which, I’ll grant you, is traditionally thought of as relatively young here in Quinsigamond. But where does it say youth and innocence are the same thing? You’re Mr. Language, right? Youth. Innocence. Two very different words as far as I can tell. Yep, I bribed a young kid. I manipulated him beautifully, I’m great at that. But I had no dealings with any innocence. Little Max has been a stranger to innocence for quite some time.”

Woo nods his head, tries to indicate that he’s impressed with what she’s said. “Very good,” he says. “Point well taken. But beyond this, you did use him as an informer. We can agree on this small, simple fact.”

“We can agree. He’s an informer. I received information from him. I do it every week. I’ll continue to do it. It’s how the job is done.”

“I’m just wondering how you feel about informers in general.”

“In general, I think that they’re pieces of garbage that can’t be trusted and are wrong as often as they’re right. I know what you’re looking for here. How do I morally perceive them? That’s what’s underneath your question. Don’t bother to answer. I think they’re contemptible. In general. But I like Max. I would exclude Max from that answer. At the moment.”

“At the moment?”

“Things change.”

“I’m having trouble placing you, Lenore. On the political compass.”

“You’ve got a hunch I’m sort of this paranoid, McCarthyist creep, a loaded gun. Ticking bomb. Fascist hypocrite. Nut-case libertarian …”

“I honestly don’t know quite what you are.”

“Well, let’s leave it that way for the time being. So much more romantic.”