The Confessor (39 page)

Geiger nodded. ‘I see.’

Dalton shook his head slowly. ‘No, you don’t. That’s the whole point.’

Geiger’s hands began cracking their knuckles, one by one, but after each
pop!
the deft, elegant fingers continued applying pressure – until the digits snapped at the base joints and hung loose, splayed, crooked – just as Dalton’s had when Geiger had finished with them last summer.

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Dalton.

The hands collapsed into a tangled, wriggling heap of fingers on the table. Some decided to leave the pack and strike out on their own, and Dalton watched them inch-worm off in different directions. A few headed toward him, and he smiled like a patient shepherd.

‘That’s right. Good boys. Come to Poppa.’

Harry was on his knees on the mattress, the knotted cord in hand, practicing playing cowboy. His water jug was on the floor, six feet away – and he was flipping the looped end of the cord at it, trying to lasso it. He’d been keeping count. So far he was five for twenty.

Matheson was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, blinkless in thought.

Harry flicked another shot, and missed. He looked at his palms. They were each missing two circles of skin that Dalton had sliced out, and the tentative scabs had come off. They hurt. They burned.

‘I suck at this.’

‘We need blood.’

‘Huh?’

Matheson looked up. ‘To help sell it.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Blood on the floor. So it’ll look real.’ He pulled up his smock and sleeves and stared at his limbs. ‘Where’s a good place to cut yourself to get blood – where you can stop it before losing too much?’

‘I once got a bad gash in my ankle – that really bled.’

‘How’d you stop it?’

‘Compression. Holding it up.’

Matheson ran a fingertip over the edges of the steel shackle around his ankle – and scowled.

‘Too smooth . . .’ He slid over to the edge of the mattress, bent his leg so the shackle rested on the floor, then took hold of it and started scraping it back and forth against the rough concrete. After a dozen strokes he stopped and felt the edge.

‘Is it getting sharp?’

‘It’ll get there,’ he said, and went back to work.

Zanni watched Geiger through the windshield. He was leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette. Neither of them had said a word on the walk back to the car, and once inside they’d sat silently for thirty minutes.

‘I’m going to have a smoke,’ he’d finally said, and stepped outside.

She couldn’t get a handle on him. There was something primal there – stripped down, with little want, without artifice, a closer cousin to an animal that belonged in the forest than a worldly man . . .

. . . and there was the Inquisitor – the steel-trap mind, the nerveless, sleek machine, cold prescriber of pain . . .

. . . and there was the man who chose to try and save her life . . .

Geiger was drifting in a sea of women – their scents, silken touch, the tug of secret knowledge. He closed his eyes. Their music was swirling in his head, the voices floating on the water in golden strands – sad ballads and lullabies and siren songs . . .

A rough, wet snort opened his eyes. Ten yards off to his right, a massive 300-pound wild boar was staring at him with milky eyes, its sharp tusks picking up the moonlight. Geiger straightened up – the animal took a step forward – and Geiger slowly headed for the car . . .

From where Zanni sat, clearly the beast was not satisfied with Geiger’s pace – because it suddenly charged at him. Geiger kicked into a sprint, reaching the car and swinging the passenger door open, and slipped inside and pulled the door closed a second before the boar rammed into it. The car shook.

‘Jesus . . .’ whispered Zanni.

They watched it through the window. It seemed unfazed by the impact, and not particularly angry.

‘Wild boar?’ she whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the ugliest animal I’ve ever seen.’

‘And much faster than I would have thought.’

She glanced at him. One might have expected a grin to accompany the remark, but not with Geiger.

They watched the boar start away with another snort – the tankish body moving slowly over the forest carpet, its large snout rooting for food.

Victor’s absence was as distinct as his presence had been. The last entry on his lengthy resumé of sins would be one of the classics, the fraternal trinity – greed, fed by arrogance, delivering betrayal. Carmine called it Zombie Poker, because once you’d made that particular bet the odds were you were already one of the living dead. Geiger thought of all those who had made the same play and ended up in his session rooms – and he wondered if wild boars ate dead, human flesh.

Zanni let her seatback down six inches. ‘I want to ask you something, Geiger,’ she said.

‘Go ahead.’

‘You’d planned on doing this solo. From the start, even back in Brooklyn – right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this morning, you were free and clear – but you called me . . . to bring me back in . . . even though you don’t trust me.’

‘I don’t remember saying I didn’t trust you.’

‘Even though you
know
my job is to kill Dalton . . . and to that end you and Harry and Matheson were expendable.’

‘Yes.’

‘So you brought me back into this why?’

‘It became clear to me that Victor would murder you, eventually,’ he said. ‘I actually saw an image in my mind of his killing you. With a knife.’

Zanni’s head did a twenty-degree tilt at him. It was one of the strangest things anyone had ever said to her. ‘
I actually saw an image in my mind of his killing you . . .
’

‘So you called to save me?’

It was a toneless question seeking information. A bank teller asking a customer what denomination of bills he would like. She had distilled the question like smooth Scotch. Whatever feelings she had about the subject were undetectable.

‘Zanni . . . Let’s just say – I know what works best for me.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry, Geiger. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me.’

She looked away, past her window. As the night stretched out, more wild voices were talking to it, and sets of golden eyes blinked.

‘Geiger . . . Why do you hardly ever blink?’

‘Remember I told you that I spent my nights in a small closet as a child?’

‘Yes.’

‘I never slept very much. I listened to music on a cassette player all night. It was pitch-black, and I got used to not knowing if my eyes were open or closed. It was all the same. I think that’s why.’

‘Why were you punished like that?’

‘It wasn’t punishment. I didn’t realize that until last night – when I had a dream. My father was trying to make me strong.’

I’m going to find a way to make you strong. Stronger than your mother. Stronger than me. So cry now, for the last time.

Geiger shifted in the seat. The sudden yanking open of the door had set his shoulder throbbing. It had been twelve hours since it had been iced.

‘And I have a question for you,’ he said.

‘Ask.’

‘The anger.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s there all the time?’

She turned to him. ‘Keeps me sharp, Geiger. In my job I can’t be the strongest, so I have to be the sharpest one in the room.’

She reached into the backseat, took something out of one of the grocery bags and put it in her lap. She opened the white paper wrapping and spread it back to reveal a three-inch-square piece of lustrous chocolate.

Geiger watched curiously as she broke off a chunk and put it in her mouth – but she didn’t chew. She just let it lie there inside her. Every ten seconds or so her cheeks would draw inward as she sucked on the treat, and then she would swallow.

The next step in the ritual was a nod in silent tribute to the pleasure – and then she began to chew what remained in her mouth.

‘Good,’ she murmured, and became aware of his stare. ‘Want some?’

‘I don’t eat chocolate.’

‘Does that mean you don’t like it?’

‘It means I’ve never tasted it.’

Zanni looked as if she’d just received news of a grievous crime. ‘Ever?’

‘I don’t think so. No.’

‘Would you like a taste?’

Geiger didn’t see it coming – because it was not something he’d ever looked for . . .

Zanni leaned to him, and took his face in her hands, and kissed him.

Her mouth was warm and wet – and sweet – and set off a ripple of cool waves across his shoulders that cascaded down his back like an electric waterfall.

The kiss was a slow, easy dance. Simple steps. Curiosity, restraint. And Zanni wasn’t in a hurry. She let her mouth linger against his. He felt the breath from her nostrils on his face – tasted the chocolate . . .

She ended it with a nip of his bottom lip.

‘Did you like it?’ She felt no need to specify what ‘it’ was.

Geiger swallowed. ‘Too sweet,’ he said.

Even in the middle of this train wreck – cars going off the tracks front and back, bodies piling up – Zanni felt her smile coming. She slid across the center console and straddled him, her knees at his waist, and pulled the seatback’s lever so it went down until Geiger was almost prone. She studied him as she unzipped her jacket and took it off, then pulled her thin sweater off over her head.

Something about the way her arms moved and her body stretched reminded Geiger of the cat. And the two had something else in common. They both made it very clear what they wanted, and when.

‘FYI,’ she said, ‘I like you better without the beard.’

She leaned down toward him – and he grabbed her shoulders and held her there.

‘The timing is questionable, Zanni.’

‘The
timing
? Geiger . . . There’s a real chance that in a few hours I might die – and if so, I’d like to have the two things I enjoy most in life before I do.’ She pulled his jacket’s zipper down. ‘And I’ve already had the chocolate.’

Zanni came for him. This time the kiss was hard, an accompaniment to other urgent gestures, fingers working at buttons, hands searching for things, bodies turning, making adjustments in the cramped space . . .

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘I have a knife taped to my chest.’

She stopped, and raised herself so she could have a better look at him. ‘If that’s your way of talking dirty, Geiger – it’s working.’ She yanked his shirt up, exposing the weapon, and tore it off, tape and all, in one pull. He winced.

‘Hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

Geiger pulled her back down to him. The scent of lavender filled his head. His hands were tangled in her hair. There was a sudden heat in his chest, an incandescent bloom, as if his heart had become a sun. He was as close to painless and thoughtless as he had ever been – and that state felt more pure than any he had known . . .

And when her first, throaty gasp came, almost a growl, it was the most honest sound he’d heard her make since they’d met.

She snored.

The sound barely met the definition’s requisites – it was a fuzzy flow and ebb, a fluttering of wings, and had he been asleep it would not have awakened him. He felt her warm stream of breath brush his cheek with each rustling.

Zanni lay half atop him, one leg and arm resting across him, her head next to his on the seatback. She’d been asleep for twenty minutes, and he’d been able to reach his jacket and hers without waking her and drape them across her slim nakedness, from the waist down to her socks.

He’d used the time to try and envision the finale.
Beginning – middle – end
.

He and Dalton had been in the business of using torture to gain information, and by its nature the process was impersonal – certainly in the way Dalton went about it – but whatever Dalton had planned, there was an aspect of it that transcended physical pain. He wanted more than suffering.

Vengeance was a key element, but there was something else floating around it, portentous but so sheer Geiger couldn’t see it. You stand on a city street corner, surrounded by aromas . . . The exhaust from a passing bus – a piquant dish drifting from a window – hot tar spread in a pothole – and there’s another scent mixed in with them all. You can smell it, almost taste it on your tongue. You tilt up your nose, turn in a slow circle. It’s right there with you. It’s knowable. But you can’t give it a name.

He heard Zanni’s breath shift into waking mode, and she sat up. She looked at her watch, then at Geiger.

‘I fell asleep.’

‘For about twenty minutes.’

The exchange was the first words either of them had spoken since she had put him inside her. It had been a long, rolling rush of sounds between silence – some of them comments, appraisals, some questions, some answers – but not one word.

Geiger saw the almost imperceptible movement of her bottom lip – just the faintest pulling away from the top. It was a tell he’d seen a thousand times on the faces of a Jones. She had been about to say something else – and had stopped to play it out in her head, and then decided to leave it unspoken.

She grabbed her panties and slacks from the floor and opened the door. ‘Have to pee.’ She got out, and went a few paces before she stopped and crouched down.

Geiger stepped out and walked east, ten yards or so, until he could see a good-sized chunk of sky through the trees – and then found the faint, smudged dividing line between the inky blue and the heavy black of the adjacent hills. The sun had at least another hour of climbing to do before there’d be a hint of it on the horizon.

He was rerunning Dalton’s video in his mind, trying to get a glimpse of the game within it. He would not factor Zanni in. If her presence ended up affecting things, he would deal with it at that point, but not now. He had one piece to play with, a single chip to get the men out alive: that what Dalton wanted, only Geiger could provide – and Dalton could not
take
it from him. Geiger had to
give
it to him.

There was a knock on his door.