Heathern (5 page)

"You don't know where it is," I said.

"I do."

"Send kids to the circus and all they tell you about are the
clowns," said Bernard. We had no more trouble recounting
what we'd seen than we would have had explaining it. I felt
I should have worn cap and bells during our presentation,
so foolish it sounded away from his presence.

"A con," said Susie, certain that we'd failed, certain that
she'd predicted as much; by her inerrant prophecy reaffirming her worth. She spread her eyelids with her fingers as if
threatening to pop her eyes out at us. "It's all in the peepers.
Nothing but psychohypnosis."

"Sounds like he's got the look to me," said Thatcher.

"The Hitler look," said Susie.

"That could be usable, depending on the circumstances-" said Bernard.

"He obviously believes what he says, it sounds like," said
Thatcher.

"Then he's even crazier than we imagine," said Susie.

"His messages would seem comprehensible to most
nine-year-olds, so you could reach a large enough audience
over time," said Bernard. "It's helpful if he does believe
what he says, we'll get that unmistakable burp of honesty
coming through the more obscure parts of the text-"

"Could he work on mass scale?" Thatcher asked.

Bernard shrugged. "We'd have to run the usual tests. See
if he washes. It could be done, perhaps. Religion's simply
an aspect of popular culture mutated. Only-"

"We saw what was there," said Avi. "I certified death."

"How can you tell anymore?" Susie asked. "They must
all look the same by now." Avi shook his head.

"He look dead to you?" Thatcher asked me.

"I'm no expert," I said. "I thought so."

"Macaffrey could have told you the sun was the moon
and you'd've thought so," said Susie.

"It is odd he had you so enthralled and ignored the
chance to go all the way," Bernard said. "While you two
were fisheyed he didn't pass along idle commentary on the
brotherhood of life? No sidebars concerning meaning? A
better race?" Bernard wrinkled his nose. "Natural diets?"

"All he talked about was what I've told you," I said.

"Small-bore ammo," said Bernard. "So we have a nondescript who tells Bible stories of his own devising to special
children and who, in his spare time, brings muggers back to
life." He chewed his thumb as he spoke. "Wouldn't be the
easiest sell to any market."

"Let's shelve this for the moment," said Susie. "We have
to examine the Jensen situation."

"It's being seen to," said Bernard.

"Boy sounds like he can talk some trash," said Thatcher.
"That's good. I need somebody convincing."

"He can't even keep his anthropology straight," said
Susie. "Neanderthals. Goddess-"

"Godness," Avi corrected.

"Fucking hell-"

"This time tomorrow," Thatcher said, "we'll get ourselves a good look at God. Next best thing, anyhow."
Throwing his head back he laughed with the delight of a
boy racing through a thunderstorm, unmindful of lightning. He glanced at me, hoping to glimpse my response to
this day's invitation. I nodded my head; he could have me,
that night. "What a wonderful world," he said, his smile
uncharacteristically beatific.

Wishing forgiveness for previous trespasses, Thatcher
hadn't entered me for almost a year. He took pleasure
rubbing himself raw against me, laying out the scenario
desired that I might serve as metteuse-en-scene. "I'll remember you in my will, hon," he always said, after. Though he provided it I never invited him to my place. We met that
night at his apartment in the north Trade Tower, a reconverted ninetieth-floor suite. At such altitude drapes were
superfluous; moonlight shining through the narrow windows threw bars of shadow across our bed. Tossing aside
the sheets, I broke from my prison, walked over and looked
out, the moon seeming so close that it could have been part
of the decor. Thatcher beat his belly as if it were a drum
when he rose, sending his victory cry to all his fellow
beasts. His city pieds-a-terre served as warehouses as well,
where purchases were stored until the executors might sort
them out. From a stack of packages he removed a box,
pulling from it what appeared in the dark as some archaeological relic.

"Jim Beam did a lot of figurines," he said, proffering what
I realized to be a two-liter bottle in the form of a bejeweled,
bloated Elvis. "Wanted one since I saw it in a liquor store,
when I was a punk. Two thousand dollars." Two hundred
thousand old dollars; with that sum he could have fed a
fraction of the starving, once. "He'd have drunk it, if he'd
drunk. He did touch the bottle. Got a paper with it
authenticated."

I discerned a date stamped on the bottom; I'd only been
graduated from Middlebury that year, and believed as I
exposed myself to the real world's virus that the country
could never be worse off. "He was dead when they made
it," I said.

Even when he loved, and he did, in his fashion, Thatcher
condescended. "One of these days E'll come again," he
said, shaking his head. With worshiping touch he rewrapped his icon within its Mylar winding-sheet. "Jerusalem Slim struck out like all the rest, but E'll turn up at the
bottom of the ninth. Wait and see."

"Maybe you can buy him when he shows up," I said.

"Let's make do with what we have, for the moment," he
said. "How'd this Macaffrey bird really strike you, hon?"

"He's got something," I said. "I'm not sure what. He'll
cause trouble doing whatever he does, I'm sure. He seems
rather independent-" Thatcher's shoulders shook; he
failed to hide his laughter, and I slapped him across the
back of his head. He stopped laughing, overcome with
emotion. "If you're going to ask for my opinion, would you
at least pretend to listen-?"

"I'm not laughin' at you, hon," he said, slipping his arm
around me. "It's the concept's got me going. I'm listening.
Go on."

"He seems to mean well in what he does. Probably
makes him feel less guilty-"

"Guilty?" Thatcher repeated, as if learning the phonics of
an unfamiliar word. "Guilty about what?"

"I don't know, most people are-"

"Whose feelings we talking about here?"

"It's how it struck me-"

"You got a crush on him already, don't you?" I ignored
him. "That's sweet. He sure had you all convinced of
something over there. Never heard such carrying on as
when you all got back." Slipping again into shadow, he
seemed no more than embodied dark. "Avi doesn't get fired
up too easy. And as for you, you've worked with Bernard so
long that an awful lot of him's wore off on you. Always
bitin' the hand that feeds you. Not enough respect to pour
into a thimble. Vipers, that's all you are."

"I'm not like Bernard."

"Bernard's got a different wound than you have-" he
started to say.

"Not by much."

"You both got what I need."

As he leaned forward his head reemerged into light, his
face reflecting city and moonshine as he kissed me. "What
the fuck are you planning, Thatcher?" I said.

"Walls always have ears, hon. Let's keep things general."

"Couldn't get less specific."

"Say somebody came along that seemed to be the
messiah," he said. "Seemed that way often enough to
enough people, at least."

"What sort of messiah?"

"How many kinds are there?" he asked. "I don't mean
palm readers, no gypsies reading tea leaves. No California
babes talking about Egypt or Atlantis or Mars. I mean the
real McCoy. What if you caught him in the wings while he
was waiting to go onstage?" His eyes held the light, shining
like beacons, cleaving the dark. "How would you effect a
co-opt? Could you interface him into the corporate frame?
How much weight could he throw in the marketplace?"

"What if he's not-"

He lifted his arms, seeming to catch one tumbling to
earth. "Making a tree grow fruit in the wilderness. That's
business, plain and simple."

Hearing screams, I remained mute, not having to convince myself that my actions could prevent a crime. "You're
crazy, Thatcher."

"Say he isn't anything but a good talker with the look,
like Susie thinks," said Thatcher. "So? Doesn't mean he
can't get things done with our help. She's good with the
details but she can be blind as a bat with the big picture. If
the idea's too-what's the word I want-"

"Crazy."

"Transcendent," he said. "With a little coaching, fellow
like Macaffrey could do us a world of good. Show him
which side of bread to put the butter on. How to slice up the
loaf."

"Why do you want a messiah?" I asked. "Why?"

"It's not like it hasn't been done before," he said,
ignoring me as well as if I were but another lost in the
surrounding crowd, one whose words went unheard,
whose existence was as inessential as fog. "Tell people
somebody's something often enough and everybody comes
around to believe it in time."

I could never be such a devil's advocate as Bernard, but I
had my moments. "What if he is the messiah?" I asked.
"What then?"

Thatcher walked across the room to look over his land,
staring into Long Island's crimson air. Retrieving my clothes
I began to dress, wondering if in his reverie he could even
see me. He kept the air conditioning so high in his rooms
that my soul felt chilled; I shivered, feeling as might a
traveler lost in a blizzard, collapsing into a drift, ignoring all
coming down around me, overcome by entombing cold,
allowing my eyes to shut slowly beneath the weight of the
snow.

"Different runway," he said. "Same approach." He
turned to watch me zip my skirt. "Heathen might just get
what they want for a change, or what they think they
want."

Heathern, the word emerged, mangled by his accent. All
were heathern in his eyes; had they become so in mine as
well? A heathern world deserved a heathern messiah, yes,
but what of our world, our sick world, our wonderful
world? Which did it less deserve, its creators or its keepers?

In morning's more transcendent glow we awaited
Macaffrey, thinking or speaking of anything else. "We
examined Jensen's office files," said Gus, lifting a sheet of
paper. "With police I searched his apartment in the Bronx,
and his sister's in Chelsea. They found it in her place."

"Did she know it was there?" Thatcher asked, reclining in
his chair, gazing through the wall-wide window onto 40
Wall Tower's pyramid crown and the ocean beyond. Sparrows and gulls flew by, uncaring of Dryco actions. Susie
took shelter beneath her paper's tent.

"Our silence was so effective that she was unaware of her
brother's death until we told her. Interrogations proceed
without result."

"Cat's got her tongue," said Bernard.

"Let's see what you got," said Thatcher. Looking over his shoulder, I read what was written, seeing carefully inscribed black letters: MAHAICA Conrad Taylor MYSTIC Mitch
Moseley 3 days 25 percent. Susie declined to examine the
note. "What the hell's it mean?"

"As it has no evident meaning it must be pertinent," said
Gus. "Mahaica is the name of a small port southeast of
Georgetown, Guyana. No other references to this name
exist in the files. What remains appears to be shorthand
rather than code. In either event, the names, the figures, the
word mystic, the meaning of those is still unclear."

"Guyana?" Thatcher repeated. "Jim Jones territory?"
Bernard nodded. "Nobody wants him, he's dead. What
else's Guyana got?"

"The usual raw materials," said Bernard. "It's an inessential state, except perhaps to Guyanans. No information
received suggests Japanese interests presently operating in
Guyana."

"No evident interests," said Thatcher. One night while I
was with him he drank to excess and began rambling about
hiring Godzilla to destabilize Japan. I had to have Avi put
him to bed before I went home. "They've been taking all
this time figuring out how to get into it right. Cut their
losses before they even begin-"

"Who wrote this note?" asked Susie, tossing aside her
paper as she might a kitten she'd tired of petting. "Jensen?"

Gus shook his head. "No ID thus far. The lettering is
done with felttip pen such as any criminal might use."

"What's the provenance of the paper?" Bernard asked.

"Standard notepad with a difference," said Gus, holding
it against the light that we might see the watermark's
modification, the fang protruding from the empty face's
smirk on our company's happy-face logo. Bernard designed
both versions of the trademark, the open and the closed.
"The paper came from this floor."

"Jensen ever come up here?" Thatcher asked.

"Never," said Gus. "The guard wouldn't have accessed
him."

"So either he came in with somebody, or somebody was
already here doing his business for him. Who's allowed on
this floor?"

"Many," said Gus. "Politicians, Army representatives,
publishers, your friends, company executives, government
officials-"