As I’m saying this, the indicator light above Manning’s icon goes dark.
RACHEL
What just happened? Why did that light go out?
The light, I tell her, is Manning.
ME
He’s gone into his shell.
The gale booms louder outside. My floor-to-ceiling windows rattle like thunder. The whole building shudders.
BEN-DAVID
What’s happening with Manning? Is he all right?
I describe Manning’s room to Rachel and Ben-David. The narrow bunk. The single chair. The crucifix on the wall, the framed photo of his dead wife and son . . .
Manning, I tell them, has already self-administered a hundred milligrams of Imitrex. He may inject himself again. He’s already taken five hundred milligrams of Cafergot, on top of his naprocene skin patch.
He’ll be alone, I say.
He’ll have shut off all phones.
He’ll lock the door.
He’ll turn out the lights and draw the blinds against any streetlamps or sounds. He’ll lie on his back on the bed. He’ll put a wet towel over his eyes.
Manning’s skull, I tell Rachel and Ben-David, will feel like an iron spike has been driven through it. He’ll try to think but he won’t be able to. When the pain hits he’ll be too stricken to speak.
Rachel asks how I know this.
ME
I’ve watched him. Not in his room. He doesn’t know I’ve even been there. But I’ve watched him go through this, in the office, on the road . . .
RACHEL
Are you in love with him?
I laugh.
ME
He’s my boss.
RACHEL
Don’t bullshit me.
I tell them more about Manning’s state.
He’ll be on his back in bed. Still fully clothed. Shoes on. He’ll have forgotten to take them off and now he’ll be in too much pain to make the effort.
His weapon in its holster will be hanging over the bedpost.
I know Manning disciplines himself to breathe.
I know he can feel the drugs when they kick in.
I know they never work soon enough, and they never take away the pain.
Here’s what I don’t know, and won’t until the next frantic hour:
Manning is indeed on his bed, lights out, fully clothed, forcing himself to breathe, when . . .
He senses another presence in the room.
He feels fear.
Fear because he knows he’s incapacitated.
Fear because he can’t move.
With excruciating effort Manning elevates his head off the pillow. Even three inches takes all his strength. To tug the towel off his face is like hauling a sheet of lead. He forces his eyelids apart . . .
A man is sitting in the single chair across the room.
INSTANCER
I’m sorry, Detective. Did I wake you?
God only knows what’s going through Manning’s mind now. Recounting the experience later, he can’t even guess at time duration. He remembers recognizing Instancer. He remembers the jeans, the T-shirt, the hoodie.
INSTANCER
I’m a little miffed at you, Manning. You tried to kill me tonight. Twice. Don’t tell me that wasn’t your intention.
Manning can feel the storm outside. His fourth-floor room looks out onto Sixty-Eighth Street. The gale howls off the park and bends, screaming, down the crosstown street.
Manning struggles to speak. He can’t make his lips move.
MANNING
(barely audible)
Who are you?
INSTANCER
Who am I? You’re the shit-hot detective. You tell me.
Instancer rises. He picks up the chair he’s been sitting in and crosses with it to Manning’s bedside. He sits. Manning strains to keep his head up, but he can’t. His eyes dart to his service weapon in its shoulder holster draped over the bedpost.
INSTANCER
Don’t even think about it.
Instancer leans forward, directly over Manning.
INSTANCER
Oh, I see. You’ve got a headache. Does it hurt?
Instancer slips his left hand beneath Manning’s neck. He elevates Manning’s head several inches off the pillow.
INSTANCER
Where’s the pain? Here?
With a crisp, two-finger punch of his right hand, Instancer hammers Manning between the eyes. Manning’s body jackknifes in agony. He cries out.
INSTANCER
Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt?
Instancer punches Manning again in the exact same spot. Again Manning cries out. He squirms wildly, trying to wriggle away. Instancer seizes him and pulls him back.
Instancer slaps Manning violently across the temple. Manning thrashes in his tormentor’s grasp, seeking to grapple with him. Instancer eludes Manning’s grasp with ease. Again he pulls Manning upright, again he hammers him, even harder, between the eyes.
INSTANCER
Who am I? The question is who are you?
The bud in my left ear is monitoring Manning. It’s turned down to MIN.
But now I hear something.
I thumb the volume up and activate the video feed on my phone.
On my screen appears real-time video from Manning’s lapel cam.
I see Instancer, pacing in the center of Manning’s room.
RACHEL
What’s happening? What are you looking at?
I show Rachel and Ben-David the screen. I’m on my feet, grabbing my holster and calling my Crown Vic.
ME
(to Rachel)
Stay here.
RACHEL
Are you crazy?
In ten seconds she and Ben-David and I are out the door and sprinting down the stairs to the curb, at which my self-driving car is pulling up right now.
In Manning’s room Instancer continues pacing. Manning writhes, clutching his skull.
INSTANCER
You know, I didn’t take to you at first, Manning. I thought you were kind of a dick.
It takes all of Manning’s strength to make his lips form words.
MANNING
How did you know I would be at the Jewish library?
INSTANCER
Uncanny, wasn’t it?
MANNING
Why me? Why am I part of this?
INSTANCER
Because I picked you. Because you’re the man!
Instancer crosses back to Manning, seizes him, and hauls him upright.
INSTANCER
Wake up, Manning! Get your head back into the game!
Instancer wallops Manning across the temple with his open right hand. When Manning tries to defend himself, Instancer backhands him across the opposite temple.
MANNING
The game? What is the game?
Manning lunges at Instancer. His feet slip. He spills into the wall. The crucifix falls and shatters; the framed photo of Manning’s wife and son crashes to the deck.
Instancer seizes Manning by the collar. He lifts him off the floor, one-handed. Instancer carries Manning to the window that faces out, four stories up, onto West Sixty-Eighth Street. Instancer smashes the frame and glass using Manning’s head and back as a battering ram. Glass and splintered wood blast everywhere. The gale from the storm screams in, filling the room.
INSTANCER
How do you like this weather, Manning? Apocalyptic, wouldn’t you say?
Holding Manning suspended, Instancer thrusts him bodily through the shattered window and frame, out into the gale.
INSTANCER
How pissed off do you think the Almighty is right now? At you. At all of humanity. Look what you’ve done to this beautiful world He gave you.
At this moment Rachel, Ben-David and I screech up outside in my self-driver.
INSTANCER
(to Manning)
The only thing standing between the human race and annihilation is the existence of the Thirty-Six Righteous Men. And they’re d
ropping fast, aren’t they?
Instancer suspends Manning fully outside the building, four stories above the sidewalk. He holds him by one hand.
INSTANCER
What’s the game, Manning? The game is global extinction. The game is the end of the world. You get it, Manning. You understand me. That’s why I like you. That’s why I want you with me at the end.
From the street, Rachel, Ben-David, and I can see Instancer, twisting Manning into the gale. Instancer harangues him, jaw-to-jaw. We can see Manning’s arms flailing and the soles of his shoes dangling in thin air.
Rachel, Ben-David, and I bolt to the rear alley, hurtle through the kitchen entrance and into the stairwell. I’m taking the steps two at a time. Rachel and Ben-David follow, half a flight behind.
In the room, Instancer hauls Manning back from outside. Shards of window glass crunch beneath his soles.
INSTANCER
You’re going to tell my story, Manning. That’s the detective’s role, isn’t it? To get inside the villain’s head. To “become” the villain.
I kick the door at the latch plate with my right butch-heeled stomper. The jamb splinters. I burst into the room with my nine-millimeter extended in both hands. Rachel and Ben-David push through behind me.
Instancer regards us without the slightest measure of surprise or alarm.
INSTANCER
(to Manning)
“The evildoer doesn’t want to be caught. He wants to be known. He wants to be understood. He wants his suffering to be appreciated and his point of view to be granted respect.”
Instancer dumps Manning back into the room’s single chair. Its legs splinter. Manning crashes to the floor.
I’m frozen. My finger is on the trigger but I can’t make myself move.
Instancer reaches to Manning’s jacket. From the lapel he tugs the lens and mini-mike of the recorder.
INSTANCER
Got it all for your report, Dewey?
He tosses me the device.
INSTANCER
See you next, you know where.
Instancer strides, absent all haste, between Rachel and Ben-David and me toward the door.
INSTANCER
(to Rachel, as he passes)
Hello, dear.
BOOK SIX
ARMAGEDDON
23
THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS, PART ONE
OUR EL AL 797 bangs down onto the tarmac at Ben Gurion International in the most ungodly crosswind I have ever experienced. Before the aircraft’s undercarriage has even touched down, the starboard wing starts ballooning under a gust that we’ll learn later hits seventy-one knots (the maximum crosswind a plane of that size is permitted to land in is twenty-five), which means the tip of the opposite wing, with its fuel tanks and fuel lines, not to mention its two port-side engines, is plunging toward the tarmac.
Passengers are screaming. My window seat is right above the starboard wing. I can see the ailerons screw-driving up up up as all engines fire on full thrust. The plane slams down, bounces twice, and stabilizes. Passengers are hanging on to each other and every surface they can catch hold of. The engines scream into reverse; brakes come up howling. The pilots finally wrestle the jet to a halt so close to the end of the runway that the aircraft has no room to execute a reversion under its own power; it has to be towed back onto the tarmac not by one tug but by three. It takes more than an hour to reach the gate, with gale-force winds scouring the field and gust-blown grit abrading the jet’s skin like a sandblaster.
Date is Friday, April 28, four days after Manning’s migraine encounter with Instancer.
Rachel has bolted.
Day One. Telling no one, not even her brother. She got on a plane somehow and fled to Israel.
Manning is beyond furious, not just at her but at himself for not arresting her immediately after the migraine incident.
Has Manning slept in the past ninety-six hours? If he has, it’s been in snatches only, despite me staying glued to him and forcing him to lie down and close his eyes at every interval where his participation is not absolutely essential.
In the minutes immediately following Instancer’s exit from Manning’s room at the athletic club, Manning has somehow managed to get to his feet and gain some measure of control over the pain behind his eyes. His room looks like the aftermath of a cyclone. Shattered glass and splintered wood litter the floor. The gale howls in through the void where the window used to be. Other athletic club residents, all male, clad in pajamas and shower shoes, are rubbernecking from the hallway, gawking at the mess and at Manning’s beat-up face. I’m displaying my shield (and Manning’s), assuring the company that everything’s under control.
After twenty minutes, when patrol officers from the Two-Oh have arrived and shooed the natives back to their rooms or down to the coffee-and-bagel bar (time is 0550; the sun is just peeking up), our deeply unnerved party collects in the kitchen manager’s office in the basement. I have never seen Manning in the state he’s in now. Rachel ventures to ask if he’s all right . . .
MANNING
All right? No, I’m not all right.
Manning had been gathering himself in a chair beside the kitchen manager’s desk. Now he rises, turns toward Rachel.
MANNING
Somebody just broke down a wall using my head as a battering ram. Somebody pounded my skull till the bone almost split.
Manning orders me to pull up the video from the convenience store in Reykjavík. He snatches the phone and thrusts it before Rachel’s eyes. On the screen she sees herself slap Instancer across the face.
MANNING
You told me you hadn’t seen Instancer in three years. This video is from nine months ago.
RACHEL
We’ve been through this. I couldn’t tell you everything or you would never believe me.
Ben-David, glimpsing the video, reacts with shock. Rachel sees this. She turns her back.
Manning catches her arm and hauls her around to face him. Ben-David thrusts himself between his sister and Manning. He’s cursing Manning and pulling Manning’s hand off Rachel’s arm. In the adjacent kitchen, a pair of staff workers are wheeling the coffee cart into the lobby for the residents. They gape at the fracas in the office until I chase them.
MANNING
(to Rachel)
You were with Instancer from the start. Tell me the truth. Tell me from the beginning.
RACHEL
I’ve told you from the beginning!
MANNING
You said you met Instancer on an archaeological dig. Was that a lie?
RACHEL
I’ve told you the truth about everything!
Manning hands me the phone and orders me to pull up the shower video. I do. Manning snatches the device back. He thrusts the video before Rachel’s face.
MANNING
Tell me the truth about this.
Ben-David, glimpsing the screen, again reacts with surprise and dismay. Immediately he defends his sister. For the second time he plants himself physically between Manning and Rachel.
BEN-DAVID
This video proves nothing, Manning. Rachel has already admitted to a relationship. Stop terrorizing her!
Ben-David tells Manning again, as he had earlier this evening at Beth Shalom, that Rachel had volunteered for the Gehenna dig at his, Ben-David’s, suggestion. Rachel had just been ordained after three arduous years of rabbinical studies. Ben-David thought the physical toil would be restorative for her. The experience would deepen her understanding of biblical lore and amplify her sense of the antiquity of the Jewish people.
BEN-DAVID
Yes, Rachel met Instancer at Gehenna. But she had no idea what he was. He fooled her. He fooled everyone. He appeared like a normal person.
Manning glowers. Ben-David describes the Gehenna excavation. An exploration shaft tunneled beneath the earth for nine levels, a hundred and twenty feet down. A geothermal field lay a quarter mile below that. Temperatures were so extreme at the deep
est two levels, Ben-David says, that all access was sealed off. Thermal barricades were erected. Students and visitors were forbidden to descend past these warning markers.
MANNING
(to Rachel)
But you went anyway.
Rachel sobs.
MANNING
You went down, didn’t you?
BEN-DAVID
Stop bullying her!
MANNING
Something happened down there, didn’t it?
Again Manning thrusts my phone with the shower video before Rachel’s eyes.
MANNING
You went deeper than anyone else. Past the barriers. You went all the way down, didn’t you? What happened? What happened down there?
RACHEL
He appeared.
MANNING
Who?
RACHEL
Who the fuck do you think?
Manning seizes Rachel by both shoulders.
RACHEL
He said he was a grad student working on the dig.
MANNING
(scoffs)
And you believed him?
RACHEL
I’ve told you all this! He looked like he does now! He was cute. He was funny. He flirted with me.
MANNING
So you did what?
Rachel won’t answer.
MANNING
What, goddamn you? You did what?
RACHEL
I couldn’t help myself.
Rachel turns. She tries to bolt. Manning catches her and hauls her back. He slaps Rachel across the face. Ben-David seizes Manning’s arm, tries to pull him away.
RACHEL
He overwhelmed me! I couldn’t—
36 Righteous Men Page 16
