The Confessor (14 page)

The to-do list for his departure was a short one. A trip to the bank and safety deposit box, packing a duffel’s worth of clothes, an e-mail to Harry, the destruction of his laptop and, lastly, a final errand in the city – then on to the Port Authority Bus Terminal where it had begun sixteen years ago. The bus driver’s hand nudging his shoulder – ‘
End of the line, son . . .
’ – waking him, without memory or identity, without need of communion, sealed within himself like a chrysalis with no urge to open.

He stepped back from the table. He could see his reflection in the buffed surface, but the nature of the wood masked all detail. It could have been anyone.

Christine watched him scoop up the last of the coq au vin and finish it. His favorite dish. Harry leaned back.

‘Never better. Magnifique.’

‘Haven’t made it in years.’ She picked up her water and had a sip.

‘You can have wine, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s not a problem for me.’

‘Yes?’ Harry nodded, and she got up and left his sight, into the kitchen. He took in the room. The one-story, two-bedroom house was half an hour north of the café, in a quiet neighborhood on Rue Antoine de Saint Exupéry, bought by her parents thirty years ago – and she hadn’t done much to it since her father died. The sofa and dishwasher looked new, but the rest looked familiar, endlessly lived in, and the radiators still complained loudly of neglect. He heard her pull a cork from a bottle. He’d told her about Lily’s death, but not the how and why – and for whatever reason, Christine seemed to think he’d stayed on at the
Times
all these years – and he had said nothing to correct that assumption. She returned with a glass of red wine.

‘Outside?’ she said.

Harry got up and they walked through the living room. He realized he’d not seen a photograph anywhere, of anyone. Christine opened a set of glass doors and they stepped outside, onto a semicircled stone patio. The dampness in the night was keeping a touch of the day’s warmth from dying. The wash of light from inside painted shadows blacker than the dark on the small backyard. He could make out the silhouette of the fence-top and the oak bench where they had made love sitting up after her parents had gone to sleep – silently, his hand over her mouth when she came – because Christine’s bed-springs squeaked too loudly. They’d had no real way of knowing for certain, but later on, they had decided it was the night Sophie had been conceived.

Christine sipped her wine and studied Harry’s profile. Its gentleness had always fit his manner, but his presence was like a whirlwind, whipping things up inside her and tossing them about.

‘How did you get the scar?’ she asked.

Harry turned to her, and his hand went to his forehead – fingertips on the thin, two-inch seam that ran out of his hairline. Carmine called it Harry’s mark of Cain.

‘Everybody should have one,’ he’d said. ‘Tells the world you paid your dues – so
do not fuck with me
.’

Harry grinned. ‘I thought about telling people I got it in a sword fight over the honor of a fair maiden, but I got mugged in Central Park. A year after you left. I was drunk. They would’ve killed me – but someone came by and beat the hell out of them. Man named Geiger.’

‘Jesus, Harry . . .’

‘Saved my life.’

‘Geiger? Like the counter?’

‘Uh-huh. We became friends. Close friends.’ A window in a house beyond the fence went dark, and it pulled him back toward another time when he felt lighter, free of weariness, without a coterie of ghosts following him about. ‘This is pretty nice.’

‘It’s been years since anyone’s been out here with me.’

His head slowly leaned toward her. She didn’t move to meet him, but she didn’t lean back, either, so he continued in – and their lips met in a kiss. Halfway through its five-second life, Harry’s mind tapped him on the shoulder. He straightened up. A gloomy little grin came out.

‘No, huh?’

Christine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Harry.’

‘It’s okay. It was a very nice kiss.’

‘Yes it was.’

Every heart has both warden and prisoner – tasked with keeping the dreadful and cruel under lock and key while they try and escape. Christine’s diligence failed her for a moment – and her eyes welled with tears.

‘Harry . . . This isn’t good for me. I keep everything in its place, nailed down tight. You being here – you bring her with you.’ She blotted her eyes with the heels of her palms before the tears could fall. ‘Seeing you . . . It’s wonderful. But I can’t have you here. I need you to go. Please don’t be angry.’

‘I’m not angry.’

‘But you wouldn’t tell me if you were.’ She smiled and then softly stroked his cheek. ‘Those last years . . . your drinking . . . How terrible for you – to love me so, and suddenly hate me at the same time. And you never said a word.’

There were times when Harry could still feel the bourbon’s burn at the back of his throat – the booze’s opening act making its announcement: ‘It’s on its way. You’ll be cool in a minute. We’re working on it.’

He shook his head. ‘Chris . . . That’s not what happened.’ He walked out into the yard, out of the light. Some things were easier to say in the dark. ‘You left Sophie for
a minute
, something every parent does a zillion times a day – and something terrible happened. And you, being you . . . you had to find a
reason
– something to grab hold of so you didn’t go under. Something to try and make sense of it. And I always understood that. I got that. The “Why didn’t I . . . ?” The “How could I have . . . ?” The “If only I had . . .”’ He heard himself sigh. ‘But because there
was
no reason, you latched on to guilt and held on for dear life – and you couldn’t hold on to anything else . . . including me.’

Christine felt the old chill – the shiver that slid quickly down her arms into her hands, the ague when there was no fever. She watched Harry step back into the light, and his blue, yearning smile broke her heart again.

‘I didn’t hate you, Chris . . . I
missed
you – and after a while I found out that when I was drunk I didn’t miss you as much.’ He shrugged. ‘We
both
found something else to hold on to . . . instead of each other. That’s what happened.’

She opened the front door. ‘I used to wonder – maybe we didn’t love each other enough to get through . . . to hold us together.’

Harry zipped up his coat. ‘I don’t think that’s true. Do you?’

‘I don’t know, Harry. These days what’s true or not doesn’t seem as important to me as it used to. Shall I drive you?’

‘No. I’ll walk to the metro.’

She leaned to him and brushed his lips with hers.

‘Goodnight, Christine.’

‘Goodbye, Harry. Take care.’

He hesitated, wondering if he had anything else to say – words worthy of a last goodbye to someone you once adored – but she closed the door softly and stepped back into the dark.

Through a window, Christine watched him turn and walk away, then went to a small breakfront, took out a bottle and poured a generous helping of cognac into a snifter. She sat down in a chair, and the tip of her forefinger began to slowly circumnavigate the glass’s rim, sending a low, mournful trill around the room. It suited her mood. He was right about the guilt . . . and all that came after. When you’re drowning, you grab hold of whatever a desperate hand finds and don’t let go. She rolled the glass in her palms. He was still the sweetest man she’d ever known – and she prayed he didn’t come back. She sniffed in the liquid’s fragrance. She was going to need all of it tonight.

There were faint priestly collars of fog round the street-lamps and Rue Antoine de Saint Exupery felt like a Hollywood backlot – a perfect replica of the real thing where the short, square, whitewashed houses were plywood facades with nothing behind them and no one inside. Harry had sensed the possibility of a new beginning in Matheson’s basement – and this felt like part of it. Perhaps a beginning meant laying lingering things to rest – things torn loose from their natural place that drifted from past to present and back on the breeze of a whim . . .

Most likely because his head was full of thoughts, as he neared the white van parked at the curb with the side door wide open his notice was cursory. Someone has forgotten to lock up, he thought – perhaps a drunkard or daydreamer or sad, preoccupied soul – and the possibility it was anything more did not occur until two hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him down and into the van. When his face and chest met the backseat two other hands grabbed his shoulders and dragged him in deeper. He felt the full weight of the first assailant coming down on him, fixing him there. There was that rental car aroma – the mild mint they sprayed in the interior for the next customer.

‘Now,’ said a man with an elegant French accent – was there any other kind? – and as the needle plunged into his neck Harry got a whiff of a familiar, singular chemical odor. It was propofol. Over eleven years, he’d injected dozens of Joneses with it. In another time and place, he would have appreciated the sublime irony. As it was, the stickler-for-detail in him started counting off the seconds of consciousness he knew he had left – no more than seven or eight, but more than enough to consider the astonishing depth of his stupidity. And then – he wasn’t there anymore.

As the Frenchman came in from outside, the young night clerk looked up from the anatomy textbook on the counter and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘Bonsoir, monsieur . . .’

Victor pointed at the rows of door keys. ‘Quarante–huit.’

‘Ah. Monsieur . . .’ He glanced at the computer monitor beside the tome. ‘. . . Fontaine.’ He took a key off the rack and handed it to the Frenchman. ‘Bonne nuit, monsieur.’

‘Bonne nuit.’

The elevator was waiting. He stepped in and pressed ‘4’ and began his ascent. He yawned, and checked his watch. One-twenty. When he was young and worked the docks they called him ‘Diamant’ – because he was harder than a rock and never wore down. Now, he could still go round the clock with a clear head, but his body sent him messages – yawns, and twinges and spasms in muscles that protested the mind’s disregard for their age. He looked up, and in the burnished brass wall saw his reflection – a slight tilt of a frown, the raised right brow a crescent moon hovering over an eye. A woman in Cologne he’d had for a week once told him he always looked puzzled about something – and displeased that he was. She’d been closer to the truth than she knew – but this job was proceeding well. Step one, done. Step two, now. Step three would be the most difficult, but its unique elements were appealing. After all these years, that was a plus. The elevator opened and he walked out toward his room.

Matheson sat at a desk before his laptop, reading the whistleblower’s original e-mail for the hundredth and last time, trying to soak up any more sense of the writer. He’d sent the rendezvous info two hours ago, and received a response ten minutes later.
I think 12.00 more acceptable for me, no? more of crowds there then. More people, I feel safer. Tell me.
Matheson liked the logic and anxiety in it. It felt sincere. He’d written back in agreement and received a reply in a few minutes.
Much thanks. I be there 12.00.

He closed the e-mail and stared at the desktop image – eight-year-old Ezra smiling, violin under his chin. Matheson stubbed his cigarette out and took a sip of Grey Goose. Every time he looked at the photo he felt a hollow thud in his chest. His rough sigh was like a trigger bringing his hands to the keys, and he opened up the special e-mail system Harry had created and started to type.

He picked up his vodka, sat back, and frowned.

Victor came out into the hall with a black tote bag, walked to a door marked SORTIE, and headed down the stairs. At the third-floor landing he stepped into the hall and walked to an unnumbered door. He stood for a moment, until he trusted the silence, then opened the door and went inside, and came out pushing a three-foot-square laundry cart with a large canvas bag hanging from the frame. He rolled it down the hall to the door marked 3B and put his ear to it – then took out Harry’s room key . . .

Matheson leaned back to the laptop and typed again.

He heard Harry’s door open and close. ‘Hey . . .’ he said, clicked ‘send’ and stood up. ‘We’re set for tomorrow. Noon. Notre Dame.’ Their rooms’ adjoining door was open. ‘So you wanna tell me who this dinner date was?’ He came through the doorway. ‘This being the City of Love, I’d like to think it was—’

A fist swung around and slammed into his stomach. He doubled over and crumpled to the carpet on all fours. Matheson’s head drooped, rasping, sucking for air, all pure reflex now.

Victor knelt beside him. “Breath slowly.”

‘. . . Whaaaaaa . . . ?’

‘It is safer for when I inject you.’

Matheson’s head slowly cranked ninety degrees till he could see his attacker. In his expression, Victor saw confusion, and pain, but no fear. And perhaps a hint of a grin that appreciated the truly absurd moments of life.

Victor nodded. ‘Good enough,’ he said, grabbed Matheson by the hair, and emptied a syringe’s milky contents into his neck. ‘Relax.’ Matheson’s lids stretched open to their max in an attempt to fight the drug’s power – and Victor saw new anger in the eyes, and nodded. ‘I understand, my friend.’

Victor pressed the basement floor button – ‘SS’ – the elevator doors closed and he watched the floor numbers light in descent. 3 . . . 2 . . . Matheson was in the laundry cart beside him, the sheets from his and Harry’s beds piled on top of him. He reached down and fluffed them up a bit, then eyed his watch again. Night was always preferable for the work. Darkness, far fewer people to deal with, less traffic . . .