Don Delillo - Players

"How about a name?”

"Burks.”

"What Burks? What's Burks supposed to mean?”

The man glanced at a car parked across the street. Burks sat in the front seat, belted in, looking straight ahead.

"It's generic all of a sudden.”

"Do it our way, Lyle.”

"I'll live longer.”

"I wouldn't go that far, pessimist like me.”

"He colors his hair. Kinnear. I forgot to mention it last time. He may have a contact at night court, for whatever it's worth.”

"Out of curiosity, Lyle, only, where's he at?”

"Don't you have my phone wired in to the computer that runs the world?”

"Not one bit, to my knowledge, besides which I can't see as it matters because A.J.'s not about to tell you anything too, too important.”

"If you don't know, I don't know.”

"Suit your own self.”

"I might speculate, of course. Make an educated guess. Why don't you tell me something about him first? What you know, whatever. You managed to come up with his name from a voiceprint, apparently, or playing tapes to various people, I would imagine. So what else do you have?”

Burks-2 was spread over half the bench, wiping his fancy glasses with the handkerchief he'd had in his hand the past fifteen minutes. His fatigue, his weight itself, running over, made Lyle relax. He looked like a man who sponsors a women's softball team. He picks his nose with his pinky finger and has sex in automobiles.

"A.J. taught voice and diction, junior college level. He worked part-time for a collection agency. He collected. As a sideline he was involved in prison reform, talking to groups, raising money, state of Nevada. He got radicaler and radicaler, as the saying goes, although what actually transpired in the man's heart of hearts, Lyle, is open to question. There was a little razzle-dazzle in New Orleans, late spring in sixty-three. Hard to get the details straight. Somebody was supposed to get snatched, some lawyer attached to a government committee. He had information somebody wanted. There were connections, funny undercurrents. Oswald, for instance. Cuba, for instance. Missing documents. But seems the thing never got off the ground. Somebody contacted the Justice Department a convenient forty-eight hours before the attempt was scheduled. Old Kinnear disappeared at that point, just about. He resurfaced in Bogota three years later, where he got to be asshole buddies with some people involved in cocaine traffic. Next thing he disappears and right after that there's arrests by the score. Then we find him on the West Coast with a group of former campus hard rocks and they're in the travel business, running people underground or out of the country. A.J. did a little everything. Not exactly a force in the movement. He's been a courier. He's been a paymaster. As we reconstruct it, he's tried to palm himself off as operational chief of this or that terrorist unit. Wouldn't you think that was dangerous?”

"He may be in Canada.”

"In truth, Lyle, I don't care, really, cross my heart. A.J.'s in Limbo, Arkansas, far's I'm concerned. It's out of curiosity, only, I asked. Passing the time.”

"He may be in Canada or on his way to Canada. I'm not sure. I could be way off. But I think Canada.”

Bread sailed out of the woman's hand and a dozen pigeons came down among the fragments. Burks-i rolled down his window, yawning. Lyle yawned too, leaning over to read the car's plates.

"We'd like some input on Marina Vilar.”

"She still wants to do the Exchange.”

"Where's she located at?”

"I don't know. No idea. I think she lives in her goddamn car.”

"Who's with her, how many?”

"Don't you know any of this from Vilar?”

"Myself, Lyle, I couldn't tell you if Vilar's a Mexican or a Swede but everything I hear leads me to believe he's ready for the basket-weaving class. A mental. Not adjusting well to present surroundings.”

"I only know of one possibility, one other person, and he's probably the one who'll actually assemble the explosive.”

"Have a name, does he?”

"Luis Ramirez, maybe. I say maybe. I can't be sure. J. more or less indicated he did passports, he falsified passports. He's spent time with groups in other countries, // he exists, if that's his name. All three of them may be related one way or another. It's a little confusing.”

"Who's J.?”

"Kinnear.”

"A.J.”

"Your information's a little out of date.”

"All three who, the Latins?”

"Right, except they're Swedes.”

"I don't see as this is funny.”

Burks gave him a number to call as soon as Marina got in touch with him. When someone picked up the phone, he was to give his own phone number and then relate whatever information he had. Everybody was giving him numbers or proposing to give him numbers. He liked it. He had a feel for numbers. He didn't have to write anything down. He'd developed ways to remember, methods that went back to early adolescence. He did it every day on the trading floor, applied these methods. They were secret mnemonic devices. No one else used precisely the same ones. He was certain of that. The formulas were too idiosyncratic, situated too firmly in his own personality, to be duplicated elsewhere.

"Is there a date that sticks in your mind?" Burks said.

"She didn't say when. Not the slightest anything. Don't know what kind of explosive either.”

"What's their background, anything?”

"They did something in Brussels once and they did the airport, in West Germany-West Berlin, I mean. What's it called?”

"Shit, I don't know.”

"Anyway they hit the wrong plane.”

"Must have been hell to pay.”

"They hit the DC-9.”

"What did they hit it with?”

"Rockets.”

"Must have been hell to pay back at the office.”

Lyle got to his feet. The original Burks responded by starting up the car.

"Aren't you required by law to tell me what organization you're with, exactly?”

"If I had the energy to lift up my foot, Lyle, you'd be required to get kicked in the balls. That's the only requirement in effect right now.”

On the floor Lyle attended to the strict rationalities of volume and price. Close attention was a benign characteristic, mild eyes everywhere, sanity inhabiting the faces he encountered. This was solid work, clear and sometimes cheerful, old-world in a way, men gathered in a square to take part in verbal exchange, openly, recording figures with pencil stubs, the clerks having to puzzle over handwriting. Paper accumulated underfoot. Secret currents, he thought, recollecting Marina's concept of electronic money. Waves, systems, invisibility, power. He thought: bip-bip-bip-bip. A floor broker cuffed him on the side of the head, jokingly, a mock boxing match. Lyle went to the smoking area and called his firm's offices from one of the public booths, asking for Rosemary Moore. When Zelt-ner answered, he hung up. Frank McKechnie was standing nearby. He smoked with his arms crossed, bouncing on his heels, rapidly. There was an aura about him of manly suffering, things gone so far wrong they could no longer be expressed in coherent verbal form, needing commentary impossible here, tears or shouts.

"Well, then, Frank.”

"The world's still turning.”

"I see you shaved.”

"The outside world.”

"It turns, still.”

"That much is obvious, even to me.”

"It's good that it turns," Lyle said, "or there wouldn't be this stillness in here. We need that motion, see, exterior flux, to keep us safe and still.”

"This is what takes getting used to.”

"Because they never told you. Mummy and daddy. Your old pap. You know, flicking his suspenders. Never told you.”

"Where do I want to be, Lyle?”

"Inside.”