The Confessor (5 page)

She stared at the giant faces. Two Geigers. A match. It was him. The rush in her pulse became a stallion’s kick. She wanted chocolate. Desperately. Her reward.

‘Why do you want to find him?’ asked the tech. ‘They want to take him out?’

‘They didn’t tell me.’ She stretched with a soft grunt. ‘Nice work, Willie.’

‘Thanks.’ He gave her a grin. ‘I, uh, always aim to please – y’know?’

She looked down at him, deadpan. Then she nodded. ‘I get it. That was a borderline-cute throwaway with some sexual innuendo for a kicker.’

The tech shrugged. ‘Sorry. I can’t help it.’

She smiled, and patted his hair like she would a puppy. ‘I know, Willie. I know.’ Then she whacked him on the back of the head so hard it sent his glasses into his lap.

‘Owww! Jeez, Zanni—’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t help it.’ She turned and went out a door. The tech put his glasses back on, and grinned with equal parts admiration and lust.

‘Fantastic,’ he said.

The tub water was getting cold, but she liked it that way. She’d been re-reading the transcript of her debriefing of Dalton. She’d forgotten it was so long. Dalton had been on heavy painkillers for a day before she could get to him, and his answers had made Hamlet look tongue-tied – but she’d let him huff and ramble because she’d had the feeling he’d completely lose it if she’d tried to rein him in. Both his hands were in casts to his elbows because Geiger had demolished them, and his jaw was wired because Geiger had broken it – and his slurp and grumble added to the bizarre spectacle. She remembered sitting across from him, listening to him, thinking –
This is someone who should be kept away from people and other living things.

Zanni went back a few pages and scanned one.

Zanni remembered Dalton’s smile when he said it.
‘He’s indestructible.’
It was not something she’d forget.

She dropped the papers to the floor. What does a child do with that kind of suffering and abuse? Do you become an alchemist and turn it into something else? She grabbed a few Raisinets from the bowl on the rim of the tub and tossed them in her mouth. Was it a
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
thing? Is that who Geiger was – taken to the nth degree? Did anything actually
get
to him?

She slid farther down and turned so her cheek rested against the cool porcelain, and closed her eyes. She wanted the release, but was tired and wished she didn’t have to do all the work. It’d been months since a man had touched her, so long that she had gone through her small cache of fantasies three or four times. Her hand slid down into the water, between her thighs. She tried to decide whether Geiger looked sexier with or without the beard . . .

Geiger stood with his back against the session room wall in overalls, long fingers tapping his thighs like frisky creatures that had crawled up his legs and attached themselves to his wrists. Hidden speakers delivered an audio loop – a snare drum and cymbal in crisp four-four time. On random beats the snare would hit a millisecond early or late, just enough to produce an unsettling mental flinch in the listener. He had brought the lights down to a murky dimness, so the Jones in the barber’s chair was a smudged silhouette and, more to the point, so was Geiger. He was dealing with a razor-sharp intellect, and Geiger wanted to blur the edges of things.

‘You’ve been Mr. Redding’s financial consultant for how long?’

‘Eight years. But you know that.’ The Jones’s voice had a thick, froggy quality. And he was right – Geiger did know – because his dossier had been extensive. Geiger knew the man suffered from vertigo and acid reflux and had made him drink a potion – 20 percent sodium hydroxide solution mixed with club soda and molasses. Geiger wanted him in a state of familiar distress, only heightened, and had asked the question because he wanted to hear the man speak, to gauge the extent of the irritant’s effect.

‘What happens when we’re done?’ asked the Jones.

‘When I retrieve the information, you’re put back in the trunk and returned to the client.’

‘Then what?’

‘That isn’t my concern. It’s not part of the job.’

It was ‘
Then what?
’ that Geiger wanted to hear. He was the master builder, and each response was brick and mortar for the house of fear he was building. Everything mattered in IR, and ‘
Then what?
’ meant the Jones was thinking beyond the present, considering events to come – possibilities more chilling than the now, more terminal in their nature. It was a useful building-block for the construction.

The Jones coughed, which set off a deep wince. ‘So when the trunk closes – that’s it for you? Out of sight, out of mind. No guilt?’

Geiger’s voice was a silk scarf wrapped around his answer. ‘About what?’

That brought an elegant curve to the Jones’s lips. In another place and time, it might have looked like a wistful smile, but now it struck Geiger as profoundly mournful.

‘I had a lot of guilt – at the start,’ the man said, ‘but you can get used to just about anything, don’t you think?’

Geiger homed in on the tone. Ennui? Remorse? Enlightenment? ‘It’s interesting you say that, Charles – because that concept is crucial to what goes on in this room.’

Geiger hadn’t asked where the money was. It wasn’t time yet. He pushed a button on the wall. The lights came up full-power, the shiny white linoleum surfaces of the room put out a jarring gleam – and the Jones clamped his eyes shut with a sideways wince.

‘“Now is the winter of my discontent,’” he said, and slowly opened his eyes. A flicker of corrupt wisdom flared in them. ‘And it’s been a very, very long winter.’

His toned body, naked except for plaid briefs, was strapped to the chair at the neck, ankles and wrists with steel-mesh belts. His curled, silver-flecked hair was a crown atop a face that showed more than a hint of excess. Geiger had his take on him: world-weary, a keen intelligence that often complements amorality, and, most importantly – a simmering resignation. Geiger wouldn’t have to create that feeling – just bring it to a boil. He walked to him and put two fingers on the jugular. The Jones’s heart seemed unperturbed at the situation.

‘This where the pain starts?’ asked the Jones. ‘The laying on of hands?’

‘Charles, what you need to understand is – being here is not primarily about pain. A man once said – “Pain is just the messenger. It reminds us of
why
we hurt.”’

‘Do you think I need to be reminded of why I’m here?’

‘I’m not just speaking of your crimes. The more important point is – you put yourself here. Almost every Jones ends up here for the same reason: They want the world to make them more than they are.’ Fingers of Geiger’s left hand started tapping a triad.

A sigh drifted out of the man’s lips. It sounded like the tide gliding up to shore.

‘Redding’s just one of a dozen,’ he said, and the act of swallowing clearly hurt. ‘I’ve stolen almost fifteen mill, all told.’ There was no boast in the statement.

‘Irrelevant information. I don’t need to know that,’ said Geiger, and took the Jones’s left hand in his. ‘It’s important you be focused, Charles, so watch closely.’ He put his thumb on the fleshy webbing between the thumb and forefinger. ‘The thenar space.’ He pressed his thumb into it. ‘Applied pressure is said to relieve pain in the head and back.’ He moved his thumb to the space between the third and fourth metacarpals. ‘But move just one inch, to the lumbrical muscles . . .’ He shoved his thumb in and the Jones arched violently against his binds as a doggish growl bounced from one wall to another.

Geiger let go. The man was breathing deeply through his mouth, trying to flush the pain away, but it only worsened the fire in his esophagus. Geiger leaned down nose to nose.

‘If you offer unsolicited information in this room, it is unacceptable. Focus is essential.’

He gave the barber’s chair a push, and it began to whirl round, completing each cycle in about two seconds. The Jones began to moan and squeezed his eyes shut.

‘Keep your eyes open, Charles. You are not allowed to close your eyes.’

The man’s lids rose over skittish eyeballs. The flush on his face was draining, red turning to stark white. His breath took on a ragged rhythm. His vertigo was kicking in.

‘I’m going to throw up . . .’

‘If you close your eyes – what follows will be worse.’ Geiger’s head turned until the vertebrae clicked. ‘Keep your eyes on me. The world is a blur, except for me.’

The Jones’s chin dipped to his chest like a sad drunk. ‘Stop it – please!’

‘I need to see that you are focused, Charles. Right now, I am the only anchor you have. Look at me. Find me every time you come around.’

The man’s head rose like a puppet’s. ‘Christ . . . I’m gonna black out . . .’

‘Look at me.’

‘Jesus . . .’ The slow, breathy release of the word stripped it of meaning. It sounded primal, nonlingual. Another revolution finished.

‘Look at me.’

‘I am!’

Designs of light flashed on his steel-mesh restraints as the Jones spun. The audio loop’s drum and cymbal tried to enforce a cadence on the fluid motion, and Geiger considered the flow of time, and man’s need to break it down into finite increments – to measure what has no size, to control what has no form, so at any moment he can declare it exactly so many seconds and minutes of an hour in a month of a year – and he thought of his clockless, timeless childhood, when nothing was measured but the precise allocation of pain. He stepped forward and grabbed the chair. The Jones swallowed between short, coarse huffs. The skin of his cheeks and forehead glistened in the lights.

‘Do you still feel like you want to vomit?’ Geiger said, and watched surprise and slow realization dawn in the Jones’s eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

‘Good.’ Geiger glanced at the chrome cart and its display – a bat wrapped with foam rubber, a Smith and Wesson six-inch Tanto knife, and a SeaChoice air horn. The Jones’s gaze followed his. Geiger was certain none of the implements would come into play, but the Jones didn’t know that. He began to stroll the room’s perimeter.

‘We will get to the truth, Charles – perhaps in more ways than one might assume.’ He hit a button on a wall panel and the audio ceased. ‘You are a highly intelligent man. Has it occurred to you – that what happens from this point on depends almost entirely on you?’

The Jones laughed grimly, and it set off a short hacking fit. ‘So I’m the one calling the shots, huh?’

‘I wasn’t speaking about control. I was speaking of cause and effect. Do you understand the difference?’

Geiger had created categories for everything that occurred during a session. Initial body languages, muscular and facial responses to interrogation, vocal tones and rhythms, emotional manifestations, delay and misdirection tactics, forms of denial – eighteen categories in all, each containing dozens of variations. He was an ever-evolving, living text on torture – student, historian, expert. But as he watched the embezzler’s head cock a few degrees, and the emerging smile – he didn’t think they fit into a particular grouping.

‘I’ll make you a deal,’ said the Jones.

‘Negotiation isn’t part of the process.’

‘I’m not negotiating. I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ the man said. ‘I know how this ends. I’ve known for years. I just didn’t know when. That’s the tricky part – not knowing
when
. So how’s this? I ask a question and you answer, then
you
ask a question and I answer, and so on – and in the end you get what you need. That’s fair, right?’

Again, Geiger studied the voice – sifting through it for signs of manipulation. The man had made a career out of duplicity . . . But he saw an opening, and a path. Unorthodox, but expedient.

‘What do you want to ask me?’

The Jones’s smile broadened. ‘Have you ever been wrong?’

‘In what sense?’

‘You finished a job, gave the client the information they wanted – and at some point the client calls and says the information was wrong. That what you believed was the
truth
– was a
lie.
That kind of wrong.’