William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

— You ever think what your lungs look like inside, Mc-Candless? Look at this. Will you look at this? He'd turned reaching through the drift of smoke to snap on the shadeless lamp rearing from the litter at the end of the table, coming away dangling a black length of cobweb — just touch it, feel it, that's what they'd feel like, that's what they look like… The thing stuck to his fingers and he bent down for the short sleeve of the zebra hide's foreleg wiping his hands on it. — I thought some doctor told you you were at the end of the line, that's what we thought happened when we lost track of you but you always know better don't you, you're always smarter than everybody else they're all just grasshoppers, aren't they, like this… as though it were what he'd been looking for, bringing down a book in a yellow jacket — it even looks cheap, even the title, even this name you made up you wrote it under.

— It's a name isn't it? Look in the phone book. It's just not mine.

— You make money on it?

— That's not why I wrote it.

— That's not what I asked you. It's rotten you know that? He'd cracked the spine, spreading its pages — picking his nose, listen to this. Picking his nose in the back seat of the mud spattered Mercedes, Slyke hunched down in the darkness watching them carry the body back to that's me isn't it. Slyke, that's supposed to be me? You never saw me pick my nose here, here's the only good thing in it up at the top of this chapter, where it says the fool is more dangerous than the rogue because the rogue at least takes a rest sometimes, the fool never, you know why it's good? Because you didn't write it, why didn't you write it.

— Because Anatole France wrote it before you were born, says it right there doesn't it?

— You never saw me pick my nose. It's disgusting, you know that McCandless? Why did you want to give him a name like Slyke. Why did you write it.

— I was bored.

— You were always bored. You were bored the first time I met you, you thought I wouldn't read it? You've got Cruikshank in here as this character Riddle, you thought he and Solant and the rest of them wouldn't know who wrote it?

— You think I even thought they'd read it? got better things to do haven't they? Forging passports, tapping tele…

— You think it didn't show up in his briefings? They read everything down there, funny papers everything even trash like this. Maybe they thought you're trying to get back at them.

— You think I'd waste the…

— Maybe they think you're where these leaks are coming from.

— What leaks.

— Maybe they…

— I said what leaks. Can you come out straight with it just once?

— I never lied to you, McCandless.

— Enough damned times you just didn't tell me the truth.

— That's a different thing.

— A different thing? Like freezing my bank account, who's got the IRS in there freezing my bank account.

— There's a very fine line, you remember that? There's a very fine line between the truth and what really happens, you remember who told me that? He'd put down the book and stood there turning up papers in the glare of the lamp. — You remember that? We used to talk, didn't we.

— One damned time you finally got it right, every, ev, ev…

— That's a great cough. Better than the last time I heard it, you been practicing? Think it's trying to tell you something?

— Why don't you tell me something. Not the truth, not from you no, no I'll settle for what really happened, why they're after me all of a sudden for unreported income that year, you knew about it you handed it to me. Cruikshank was your COS in Matidi he knew about it, he had to, now suddenly nobody knows about it but the IRS.

— Then what are you worried about, what do you…

— Not worried I'm just damned fed up! You're still working for Cruikshank?

— I'm still working for Cruikshank. I just told you, I'd never…

— Never lie to me no, then just tell me what in the hell you…

— What are you worried about. There's no record you were ever employed is there? They'll deny any classified operation you know that, that's agency policy. Anybody knows that, read it in the papers.

— In the papers, read it in the papers like this ringer they've got showing up in court with a bag over his head?

— Like him.

— Who is he.

— Ask them. Ask Cruikshank.

— I'm asking you. I'm asking you Lester, break in here when you think nobody's home with this nonsense about the redhead, am I getting into the redhead as though we're still sitting there in the Muthaiga Club before they set you up with that thin lipped Somali, before Cruikshank and his…

— That's a different thing. That's a different thing, Mc-Candless. We never got that much from you anyhow… He stood turning up slabs of colour, pinks and blues, unlabeled diagrams, — nothing we weren't already getting someplace else till you went to work for Klinger… and he held up a map detail to shake the dust from it, spread it flat on the file. — Is this his site?

— I don't know what it is.

— Don't tell me what you don't know. Just tell me what you do know. Klinger was trying to round up investment when he pulled you out of that broken down Tabora Middle School wasn't he? or had they already fired you. He sent you out with your little hammer and magnifier to see if that site he'd cornered was worth further exploration and you came back and told him what you'd found. When he showed up with his exploration permits he had what he said was your mapping, he had the remote sensing and these infrared scannings, high resolution photographs down to eighty square metres all over the whole seven thousand acres lining up claims with that mission boy down in the Chamber of Mines. You both knew there was a claim running into the mission's land, they'd already developed two shafts running right up to the edge of it. They made Klinger an offer he thought was too low so he was running around to Lendro, Pythian Mining, South Africa Metal Combine, all of them with these reports on the ore body he'd found out there on the mission land trying to raise the ante. What about it.

— What about it.

— These reports. What did you know about his reports.

— I knew you and Cruikshank were seeing every damned one of them. I knew you were paying somebody off to get copies of everything he came up with.

— How good was it.

— You saw it all. Ask Klinger.

— Ask Klinger.

— Well ask him! I didn't work up his proposals he did, I never saw them.

— What did you find.

— I told you. Ask Klinger.

— What's the last time you saw him.

— I never saw him again and look Lester, put the top back on that box and put it back where you got it. Whatever you're after it's not in there.

— Is this Irene?

— That's Irene. Put it back.

— Pretty. You never told me she was that young… the snapshot dropped back in the box and he stood there fitting the top on. — They found Klinger in one of those alleys back of the Intercontinental with two holes in his head.

— Is that it? You think I know who killed Klinger? Is that what all this is?

— Nobody cares who killed Klinger… He reached the box him, — could have been anybody. He was getting his hands on that slut that worked the New Stanley, we figured it was that Afrikaner she said was her husband. They were both gone the next day. It's like Dachau in here, you know that? He struck out to shatter the tranquil column of blue smoke rising between them, — will you put it out? You're not even smoking it, look at it. It's just lying there smoking. You're making me smoke it too, you know that?

— Why don't you just stop breathing then, go out and get some fresh air, let yourself out like you let yourself in.