The Inquisitor: A Novel (15 page)

“Geiger, I’m real hungry.”

“I’ll make you something to eat.”

Geiger came across the yard and they both went into the kitchen. A black walnut counter lined two walls. There was a coffeemaker and a bean grinder, a sink and a Viking two-burner cooktop. Beneath it was a mahogany-paneled compact refrigerator. Atop one counter were a wood-block knife holder with two blades, a wooden utensils cart with two spoons, knives, and forks, and two large stainless steel bowls, one of them filled with fruit and vegetables. On a wall rack hung a cast-iron skillet and a stainless steel pot. In a corner was a combination washer-dryer. Everything gleamed beneath four hanging pendant lights. The room was handsome and minimal—there was nothing extra.

Geiger turned on the water, put some broccoli and asparagus on the counter, and took a knife from its slot.

“Weird,” said the boy.

“What?”

“You don’t have any cupboards or drawers.”

The only occasion when Geiger had ever spent time in a child’s presence was an afternoon years ago when he’d gone to La Bella to give Carmine his monthly loan payment and had been asked to stay for lunch with Carmine and his nephew. As always, the offer had been a smiling command presented in the form of an invitation. Geiger had sat silently while Carmine regaled him and the squirrelly boy, who had been about Ezra’s age, with stories about his stints in the navy and the teamsters. Then Carmine had leaned toward him and said:

“When you walked in the door, my nephew said something. Tell Geiger what you said, Michael.”

The boy had pointed his nose down at his pasta primavera. “I don’t remember,” he said. His glance at Carmine was dark with a sullen question:
Why are you making me do this?

Carmine’s smile was benign, but then it always was. “Michael, tell Geiger what you said.”

“I said…” the boy mumbled, and looked at Geiger. “I said you looked weird.”

“Be specific, Michael,” Carmine prompted.

The boy looked resigned to his fate. “I said, ‘Look at that guy. I betcha he’s a freak job or a retard.’”

“Good,” said Carmine, and mussed the boy’s hair. He sat back, a sage preparing to dispense wisdom. “Now, there’s a reason I made you do that, Michael—it’s so you won’t forget lessons to be learned here. Lesson number one: Never insult someone you don’t know to somebody else, because the person you’re talking to might respect that person or care for him, like I do Geiger—in which case you’ve insulted
both
men. You see?”

The nephew nodded, his lips working nervously.

“And lesson two: Talk like that and you might end up becoming a spoiled little punk who gets his goddamn face slapped. Now go home.”

But with Ezra, there was an aura of gentleness, the kind of affect sometimes interpreted as sadness. Geiger also noticed that a stillness ruled the boy’s body. Apart from actions intended and necessary, he hardly moved at all—there were no impatient gestures or childish fidgets.

With a soft meow announcing a homecoming, the cat came through the flap on the pet slot at the bottom of the back door. He stopped for a five-second, one-eyed appraisal of the visitor.

Ezra crouched down. “Hey…” He held out a hand. “Boy, that’s a bad-looking cat. He yours?”

“He lives here. He goes where he wants, but he always comes back.”

“That’s a song, y’know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“‘The cat came back, he just couldn’t stay away.’ You don’t know that?”

The animal sprang effortlessly onto the counter and started nuzzling his battered head into Geiger’s forearm.

“What’s his name?”

“Cat.”

“That’s what you call him? ‘Cat’?”

Geiger gave the cat a short, hard scruffing on the head, then filled the empty bowl with water. The cat settled in for a drink. The boy’s lips bunched up in displeasure as he watched Geiger line up half a dozen stalks of asparagus on the counter and cut off their pale ends in one motion.

“That stuff for me?” the boy asked. Geiger nodded. “For breakfast? Don’t you have any, like, y’know—
food
food? Cereal? Munchies? Chips?”

“No.”

“Man…” The boy’s voicing stretched the word out into two plaintive syllables. “Can we go get something?”

“No. No going out now. There are also apples and pears.”

“I’ll have a pear,” Ezra said bleakly. He went to the bowl, picked one up, and bit into it deeply. “Good,” he said, nodding, and took another bite without swallowing. He drew a finger softly down the cat’s spine; the tail and haunches rose at the caress.

“Geiger…”

“Yes?”

“I think he’s in the city someplace. My dad.” Geiger put the vegetables back in the bowl. “He left me a note. He said he had stuff to do in the city but he’d try to be home later. And he told me to keep the door locked.”

“But you don’t know why they’re looking for him?”

“Uh-uh.” The boy shrugged, and a sigh left him as his shoulders came back down. He looked like he was deflating. “Can I call my mother?”

“Yes. Soon. Is she at home?”

“No. She’s on vacation—sorta. She’s in New Hampshire, in a forest. She said it’s called a ‘silent word retreat’ or something like that. She calls my cell at around ten every morning. Then they take her phone away from her till the next day.” He suddenly punched the counter, and the cat looked up. “Shit—those guys took my cell!”

“No. I have it.”

Geiger took the cell phone from his pocket, turned it on, and put it on the counter. He’d wait until she made her call, then he’d get on the line. It would be tricky.
My name is Geiger. Your ex-husband is missing. Your son was abducted, he’s with me now. You have to come to New York right away …

“This will be hard for her,” Geiger said. “I think it’s better if we wait for her to call you—like she usually does. All right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Ezra stroked the cat again. “Can I pick him up?”

“Yes. Scratch his scar. He likes that.”

Ezra picked the cat up and cradled him in his arms. His pointing finger went to work on the grizzled old wound, and the animal began to purr loudly.

“Man, listen to that.”

“Ezra. How many men came to your father’s apartment?”

“Two grabbed me. I think maybe I heard another one in the living room. Not sure.”

“I only met one man,” said Geiger.

“And he just let you take me away?”

“No. I knocked him out.”

The boy’s eyes widened with childish awe. “Really? You, like, hit him with something?”

“My fist.”

Geiger found the act of conversation enervating. There were so many new things on different levels to deal with: accommodating the boy’s presence and voice and questions, listening and responding, focusing on what action he might take.

“One of them was a big black dude. He said he’d kill me if I screamed.”

“He was trying to scare you,” Geiger said.

The boy’s voice tightened with anger, his lips crimping. “Well, I hope he was the one you hit. I hope you really beat the shit out of him.” He turned and walked back toward the couch with his new friend in his arms.

A thought unfurled in Geiger’s head like a “Grand Opening” banner:
Nothing is as it was. Everything has changed.
He felt set loose into the world, keenly aware of something lost and left behind, like a soldier who still senses the presence of an amputated limb.

Ezra called out: “Your cell phone beeped.”

Geiger walked to his desk. The screen on his cell phone read “1 Message.” He picked it up and punched a key. Instead of the usual “H” or “C” he saw “212-555-8668.” Reading the small font made the numbers’ edges blur and brought a dull ache to the dark side of his eyeballs. He’d never had a call from anyone but Harry or Carmine—not even a wrong number. He chose the “listen” option. It was Harry, the voice cutting through a background of mushy, chaotic noise.

As he listened to Harry’s message, Geiger shut his eyes. He saw a sky filling with clouds, a roiling, ominous crop. He tried to visualize a god puffing up his cheeks and spewing out a strong wind that would sweep the clouds away, but none came.

“This is really cool,” said the boy.

Geiger opened his eyes and saw Ezra standing before the custom-made CD racks, exploring the rows of the vast music library. The boy tilted forward, a particular title eliciting a grunt of interest.

“That’s the
Dumbarton Oaks
Stravinsky conducted, right?”

“Yes.”

“How many CDs you got?”

“Eighteen hundred and twenty-three.”

“Man, that’s a lot.”

Cell phone in hand, Geiger started for the back door again. “Be right back.”

“Can I put some music on?” asked Ezra.

“Yes.”

Outside, the mounting heat of the day was burning away the clouds and damp thickness. The opening strains of Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet reached him like a tap on the shoulder, and Geiger turned to the sound like someone encountering an old friend in an unlikely place. Then he looked down at his phone and pushed the “call back” button. After one ring, Harry picked up.

“Hello?” Harry said.

“It’s me.”

“Jeez, man. It’s good to hear you.”

Even with all the background noise, Geiger could make out Harry’s sigh rustling through open lips. “Tell me what happened, Harry.”

The request was a skeleton key opening the tumblers in Harry’s mind. “A motherfucking train wreck is what happened! Jesus fucking Christ—how about guns and murder threats?” As he spoke, Harry picked up momentum, each word like a tiny hit of speed fueling him to the next. “Bodies getting tossed around. And blood, man. A lot of fucking blood!”

“Harry, slow down. Facts.”

Geiger could see Harry talking, the familiar tone and cadence, see his scowl, his wriggling discomfort. It suddenly struck him that Harry was the only person he actually
knew.

“Okay, facts. I walked home, took a shower, and found Hall sitting in my living room. He tells me to call you—I said no. He says he’ll kill me if I don’t—I still said no.”

As Harry related the story, Geiger allowed himself a momentary glimpse of its underlying import: another human being made an act of sacrifice on his behalf. He quickly pushed the thought aside.

Harry finished his account and took a deep breath. “Jesus, man—I almost killed somebody this morning!”

“How did Hall find you?”

“I don’t know, but he said something that makes me think he’s got access to cell signal tracking. That’s why I told you not to call my phone.”

“Was there a third man? The boy thinks three men came to his apartment.”

“There were only two in mine.”

Geiger’s peripheral attention took note of a violin suddenly injecting a jarring melody into Webern’s string quartet. It rose above the other players, but another full measure played before Geiger recognized it as a signature snippet from Mozart’s Second Symphony. He ran back inside and saw the boy’s cell phone on the kitchen counter. Ezra was picking it up as its Mozart ringtone sounded again.

“Don’t answer!” Geiger yelled.

The boy flinched and then turned as Geiger came at him. “Don’t hurt me! Please!” His body folded up, cowering against the counter. “Please don’t hurt me!”

Geiger snatched the phone out of the boy’s hand and jammed his thumb down on the “end” button. But the ringtone sounded again, so he hurled it at the wall and it shattered.

Geiger looked over at the boy. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

The boy’s eyes glistened. He nodded, but tears started down his cheeks. When a sob broke from his chest, he raced out of the kitchen and Geiger heard the bathroom door slam.

“Geiger?”

It was Harry’s voice. Geiger glanced at the cell phone in his hand.

“Geiger! What the hell’s going on?”

“Harry,” he said into his phone, “how do they track cell phones?”

“You know—triangulation. Cell towers are always listening to your signal, handing you off from one to another as you move around, figuring out which one will give you the best service.”

Geiger saw himself in the Ludlow Street viewing room, taking the boy’s cell phone from Hall’s jacket—so Hall knew the boy’s number. He drew in a deep breath, trying to stem the flood of adrenaline. He heard the shower start, and it took him a few seconds to understand what the sound was, because the only time he’d ever heard it was when he was in it.

“Harry, do you have to place a call or answer one for them to get a fix on you?”

“No. As long as a cell phone is on, all it has to do is ring and they can track it.”

“How close a fix can they get?”

“Pretty tight. Three or four blocks, maybe closer.”

“What did Hall say to make you think he could track a cell?”

“He told me to call you, I said no, and then I told him that even if I did you wouldn’t answer. Hall said, ‘Just make the call. We’ll take it from there.’ What’s that sound like to you, man?”

“Harry, the boy’s cell phone just rang.”

“Fuck. What’re you gonna do?”

“I don’t know, Harry.”

The words seemed to hang in plain sight before Geiger, mocking him, a freshly coined motto for a new age.
I don’t know.

“I have to get him to his mother,” Geiger said. “She’s in New Hampshire now.”

Geiger heard Harry mutter under his breath and then say, “Lily, come back here. Lily! Goddamnit.… Listen, Geiger, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”

“Harry, wait…”

His answer was a dial tone. Geiger stood wondering what he would have said next. The quartet played on, and he walked toward the bathroom.

He rapped on the door. “Ezra?”

The shower turned off.

“What?” said the boy.

“I couldn’t let you answer the phone.”

“Why not?” The question was a plea.

“If you did, those men might have figured out where you are.”

“How’m I gonna talk to my mom now?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

The door opened a crack.

“Do you have something I can wear? When I was in the trunk I … pissed my pants.”

The humiliation in his words hung in the air.