Jess Walter - The Zero

“We had a deal, Remy. The bureau provides you with information… and you keep us apprised of what your gay little secretarial outfit is up to. I went to bat for you, Remy. How does it look when my director comes to me with these pictures of you meeting with this agency queer? How do you think that makes me look?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“What did you possibly think this would accomplish?”

“I don’t know… maybe help me find this girl, March-”

“Come on,” Buff said. “We both know that’s not what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to get a fuckin’ foothold. You’re playing the bureau against the agency, figuring that Dave would never find out you’re working with me and that I’d never find out you’re working with him. Well, that, my friend, is a dangerous fuckin’ game. Do I need to show you the other picture I got in here?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Come on. You can’t guess what’s in here?”

“No.”

The man tossed Remy the manila envelope.

Remy stared at him in the rearview mirror before opening the envelope. The photo showed a man crumpled up on a sidewalk, a Middle Eastern man with a thick beard and short hair, wearing tan slacks and a white shirt. The man was facing sideways, his legs cocked as if he’d just fallen off a bike. A slick of blood spilled out from his neck and head.

“Remember him?”

“No,” Remy said. But he did remember the blood on his shoes and he swallowed.

“Oh, so you’ve never seen this guy before, is that it?”

“No,” Remy said again. “Never.”

“And I suppose the name Bobby al-Zamil doesn’t ring a bell?”

Remy covered his mouth. The lunch reimbursement report, the man who’d had lunch with March before she died, the man Markham was going to work . Remy looked back at the photo again. “Is that him?”

“Fuck you, Remy.” Buff sped off again and Remy fell back in his seat. “I told you we were working al-Zamil. So what? Then you happen to meet with an agency field supervisor, and the next thing we know al-Zamil gets depressed and takes a walk out his apartment window?” He caught Remy’s eyes in the rearview. “You tell your little friend at the agency that if he thinks this gets us off the case, he’s fucked in the head.”

“I swear, I don’t know anything about this,” Remy said. “I saw his name on a piece of burned paper that looked like Australia. That’s all.”

Buff spit laughter. “Australia. You’re a fuckin’ piece of work, Remy. You know that?” He stomped on the gas again and the car took off.

Remy stared at the photograph and covered his mouth. “I swear-”

“Look,” Buff said. “I’m gonna give you another chance – you’ve been getting us solid stuff, and we might need you.” He shrugged. “And we hadn’t turned al-Zamil yet anyway… But you made me look like a horse’s ass. You gotta give me something to take back to the director.”

“I don’t know what I can give you.”

“Gimme your source.”

“My source for…”

“You’ve been one step ahead of us on this cell, Remy, and I need to know how. Give me the goddamn name of your source.”

“What name?”

“Yeah, and who’s on first, you smug son-of-a-bitch,” the man said. He put his sunglasses back on. “Okay, tough guy. Fine.”

The car’s tires chirped again as they skidded around another corner, and then the brakes jammed and the car came to a shuddering stop against the same curb where they’d started. “Get out,” Buff said.

Remy opened the car door.

The man turned and faced Remy for the first time, his face wide and uneven. He spun his cap around so that it faced forward, so that Remy could see the word BUFF again. The man held up his right index finger, which bent sideways at a thirty-degree angle. “You go ahead, play your little games. But if I was you, you calm, cool motherfucker, I would keep this one thing in mind-”

“HALLUCINATORY IMAGES,” Remy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Rieux was saying. “What you’re describing is textbook PTSD. Visions. Stress-induced delusions. Dissociative episodes. Maybe even Briquet’s syndrome. Look-” He laughed. “I’m pretty sure you’re not working for some top-secret department, investigating whether or not your girlfriend’s sister faked her death.”

“I’m not?”

“I don’t think so, Bri. Secret agents interrupting you on the toilet? Yelling at you in gypsy cabs, buying you lattes? Mysterious Arab men in wool coats?”

“That’s all… hallucinations?”

“Sure. Why not. It’s very common, Brian. I see it all the time.”

“You do?”

“Well… no, I haven’t personally seen it. But it’s all right there in the literature. Survivors can expect to experience delusions, persecution, paranoia. Delirium. Hell, after what some of you guys went through that day… I’m surprised you don’t have flying monkeys drive you to work.”

“So… the paper? The blood on my shoes?”

“You got a better idea?”

“I don’t know. It just… doesn’t feel like that. Are you sure?”

“Am I sure?” He spun in his chair and pointed at the diploma hung on the wall. “Do you think they give these out for masturbating? Well…” He laughed again and then assumed a serious face. “Listen. I don’t mean to be condescending, but some of the real issues you’re describing – not this fantasy stuff, but your son growing away from you, your inability to commit to a monogamous relationship, concerns about the ethics of your profession, alcohol abuse… this is pretty standard stuff for a man your age.”

“Are you saying,” Remy asked, “this is some kind of midlife crisis?”

“I don’t mean to minimize it. But you are a certain age. You’ve been through this severe trauma. Lost friends. Coworkers. And then, when you should be coming out of it, you had to suddenly abandon a successful career with the city because of back problems-”

“No, it’s not my back,” Remy protested weakly. “It’s my eyes.”

“No. I don’t think so.” The psychiatrist spun in his chair, opened a drawer, flipped through his files, and came up with a short report. “See, it’s right here.” He handed over the report, which read clearly Disability due to chronic back pain .

“No, this is a cover story,” Remy said. “For the work I’m doing.”

But Dr. Rieux pulled a prescription pad from his desk and scribbled something on it. He tore the sheet out and held it up for Remy. “Here.”

Remy read the prescription. “What’s this?”

“This will help,” he said.

Remy held up the medical report on him. “How come there’s nothing in here about the gaps?” he said.

“Gaps?” Dr. Rieux held out the prescription. “What gaps?”

“The gaps, ” Remy said, as he reached for the prescription sheet and-

A MIST hung in the air, fine droplets suspended as if on strings from the sky, distorting distance so that the grand house seemed miles away, across rollers of wet mounds and wild grasses. The house sat between two massive oaks; at three stories it was half their full height, with shutters and a wraparound front porch – a beautiful colonial country house with a fenced horse corral and barn beyond it. Remy stared at the house through the mist, which flattened everything and made the world appear sluggish and slow. Two hundred yards beyond the house Remy could see cars crawling along a narrow highway, slowing to make the switchback like mourners pausing over a coffin. It was dawn and he was sitting alone in this field two hundred yards from the house. He looked down. There were binoculars in his hands. He held them up and zeroed in on the top floor of the house. An attractive woman in her thirties was eating a cup of yogurt. Remy had a headset on – a small earpiece and mike – but he couldn’t hear anything. He watched the woman walk around the top floor, from window to window. She was wearing workout clothes, bicycle tights maybe, with a collared shirt.