Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

“I see.”

“You see what? Besides, I was pretty curious how a guy like you lived, what your setup would be and all.”

“And do you approve?”

“Beautiful place, if you can afford it. St. Iggy’s must be paying sweet these days.”

“I have to say there have been a few grants. But I can’t believe in all these years no one’s ever told you it’s rude to inquire about someone’s income.”

Lenore lets out a sharp bark of a laugh that almost echoes at the other end of the loft.

“Give me a freaking break, Freddy. This is America. Twentieth century. Income is all we fucking talk about now that sex is dead.”

“My mistake. I thought it was God that was dead.”

“What do you think killed him?”

Woo smiles, takes a deep breath, finally takes his hands off the mug and sips his tea. “Lenore,” he says, “you are truly unlike any woman I have ever known.”

“You’ve got to get out more, Freddy.”

“You want to know what I think? I think you have a problem turning off, what shall we call them, certain police traits, investigator’s characteristics—”

“—Gestapo tendencies, Nazi reflexes.”

“No, no, no. That’s not what I said.”

“Comes pretty damn close.”

“I apologize, then. I should have been more clear. What I meant was that you look at me and you see a typical academic—”

“You’re not so typical, Freddy.”

“—and you see my home and a spark goes off, a little buzz sounds, and your brain is already ahead of you, doing the math, saying ‘teacher’s salary, great big loft, something is wrong,’ and you’re off and running the possibilities.”

“So which one is it?”

“Which?”

“Possibility?”

“Oh. Yes. The most obvious one, of course.”

They stare at each other, mouths closed, shoulders squared.

Woo smiles first and says, “My parents had some money.”

“First guess,” Lenore lies. She’d had an offbeat suspicion that Woo had twenty over-the-limit credit cards in his desk drawer and a shaky and stupid mortgage destined to fall on him when the first grant ran dry.

“So, now, let me invade you for a while,” Woo says.

“Excuse?”

“This man, Zarelli, when did things start to go wrong with you and him?”

“Ooh, I’m impressed. Let me guess, you did body-language seminars in the seventies.”

Woo is genuinely thrilled and amused by her comment.

“Closer to the truth than you’d think.”

“I think I’m pretty close. We Nazis are like that.”

His smile fades. “Lenore, honestly, I’m sorry if you misinterpreted—”

“C’mon, Freddy,” she says, calm, still friendly, “I didn’t misinterpret a thing. But there’s no need for an apology. Really. I know the truth about my beliefs. You know me for a matter of hours and make a judgment. You know I’ve done the same about you. Big deal. Happens every day. It’s how adults live. It’s practically our right. So enjoy your opinion. It doesn’t change the truth. I’m the one who knows the truth. There’s no fascist inside of me, Freddy. No way.”

Woo gives up on apology and says, “Confident woman.”

“Oh yeah. Read ‘bitch.’”

“Oh no. This I reject. The chauvinism charge I reject. Absolutely not. I don’t even acknowledge the word bitch in its colloquial sense.”

“Good word. I use it all the time.”

“I’m a little sensitive about being clear on this point. Yes, I’ve made a judgment concerning your natural aggressiveness. No, I do not regard that aggressiveness in terms of your sex.”

“So, if I was standing here, minus breasts and plus penis—”

“—I’d be a very disappointed man.”

“Scuse me, we’ll get back to the jokes and the flirting in a minute. If it was Zarelli’s body with Lenore’s personality, Lenore’s character, the fascist implications would have still come out.”

“First of all, I reject the fact I implied fascist tendencies. I did not. You want to think I did. Not the case. Plain and simple. The word police , the word investigator , does not equal fascist or Nazi. Not even close. Not in the context I used. But, to your point, yes, had you been a man, and had there been an implication, it would have come out. I would have thought the same thing. And no bitch word. Vocabulary of the oppressors.”

“Okay, truce. These kinds of arguments can never be won.”

“And winning is quite important—”

“Here we go again, you don’t quit, Freddy.”

“Liability of the profession.”

“There you go. Every profession has its dangers, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Isn’t it exciting when we agree?”

“So how long have you been popping speed?”

“Excuse me?”

“What’s today’s phraseology? Crank? Meth?”

“You’re a loon, Freddy.”

“Please, Lenore. I acquiesced on the money question. You balked on Mr. Zarelli. It’s still my turn.”

“What does a guy in your position know about crank?”

“Ignorance of history is a dangerous flaw, Lenore. Before speed was seized by the working class, it was certainly graduate student domain. How else does one read almost two hundred very dense texts in less than a year?”

“You did that?”

“Nineteen eighty. The year the assault on language began.”

“What makes you say—”

“To be honest, I wasn’t completely sure. I took a learned guess. My big question is … I can’t believe the others, Zarelli, Shaw, Peirce, I can’t believe they haven’t noticed.”

“Please, this is narcotics. Sooner or later, everybody has a hobby. If it’s not crank or crack, it’s shoe boxes full of hundreds and foreign cars. I think you know what I’m saying.”

“Zarelli? Shaw?”

“Zarelli, yeah. Shaw, I don’t think so, but she’s young. Give her time. See, Freddy, I’m not a Nazi, I’m a cynic.”

“You’re saying the whole department is corrupt?”

“No, you’re saying that. I’m saying that a blanket statement like that, in a situation like ours, like mine, like the department’s, I’m saying it’s completely grey, I’m saying every day is relative. No, I don’t use the word corrupt. I don’t think it applies. I don’t think it’s like anyone is on Cortez’s payroll. Unless even I’m totally blind. I’m saying there’s a huge system that employs both our side and Cortez’s. And we both work for it. We maintain a pathetic balance. We play yin and yang and keep the wheel turning. Bangkok is a pinball machine, Freddy. Zarelli and Shaw and Richmond and me are the flippers and Cortez is the silver ball—”

“Oh, please.”

“Screw you, you don’t like the way I talk. I’m saying mostly we keep Cortez and company bouncing within their borders. And sometimes someone is slow on the flipper and the ball rolls through.”

“And is that someone ever you?”

“I’ve got my own problems. According to you anyway. And I’ve got my own theory about Cortez.”

“Which is?”

“Puppet. Total, willing puppet. He’s a smart guy and a better actor. He’s probably even a pretty good manager. Maybe he knows how to move money. And maybe there are connections back in South America. But I don’t care. There’s someone above him. There’s someone who never walks into Quinsigamond. They can shred and shove every file from Interpol to the FBI to Lehmann and his Federal walking egos at DEA. There’s somebody else. I call them the Aliens.”

“The aliens?”

“You really popped crank, Freddy?”

“Through all of graduate school and for a year after.”

“How’d the nervous system do?”

“How do you think?”