“How old are you?”
The boy smiled. “I’ll be seventeen on Thursday, sir.” His breath smelled of Juicy Fruit.
“A shame.”
“Why’s that, sir?”
As Martin Armistaad’s garrote bit deeply into the boy’s throat, tearing open the carotid artery, he said, “Because statistically speaking most boys get laid in their eighteenth year. Eighteen point eight four to be exact—six times pi.”
The take from the register wasn’t much, but the store had good road maps, and the boy’s car keys led him to a 2004 Corolla out back—and of course he could pump as much gas as he liked.
He had already charted occurrences backwards from the bombings at Ancaster College, and sure enough they conformed to a factor of pi—Like everything else in the devil’s kingdom, he thought.
He took out the newspaper clipping that had been mailed to him three days before his surprising release. It related the story of the memorial for the victims of the Ancaster College bombings. It featured a photo of Viola Tripping.
It had shocked him because he recognized the girl/woman.
He’d seen her in the clearing while doing what some called dreaming.
In the newspaper photo she was entering the church for the memorial. It was raining, but she was wearing sunglasses and holding some man’s hand—her tiny frame like a child’s beside him.
He’d been in the clearing often enough. But he was never able even to glimpse the glass house except for that one time with her.
He’d first experienced the clearing as a young man, right after he’d figured out the exact date of the beginning of the market crash in 1973. It was in what he later understood was a waking dream. A dream that always had a behind and an ahead. Behind was the dense forest with all those lost voices seeking in vain to find the clearing where he was. Ahead were the very few who had found their way out of the clearing and were on their way to the glass house. Ahead had always been out of his reach, despite his desperate searching for a path out of the clearing.
Then he’d seen this girl/woman in the newspaper photo, Viola Tripping, in the clearing, and a path opened. It was then that he caught his only glimpse of the great glass house. But, in an instant, the path vanished—as did Viola Tripping. He returned over and over again to the clearing, hoping to find the girl/woman, but to no avail. And he knew, like a parched man in the desert knows he must find the oasis, that he had to find the glass house.
Then the day before his release he’d seen the girl/woman shaken and frightened on the ground of the clearing.
“Who are you?” she’d demanded.
“Never mind that. Lead me to the glass house,” he’d said.
“You don’t know the way?”
“No, but you do.”
“I don’t. I’ve only seen it once.”
“When you were with me.”
And the two had stared at each other, knowing beyond knowing that only together could they ever reach the great glass house.
• • •
Martin drove the Toyota through the night—west, running from the dawn, farther into the heartland. As the sun rose behind him he took in the desolation of midwest America. Strip malls and small towns and everywhere a drab uniformity, as if, as Lenny said, “First morning you see the cannon, then there’s nothing else to do.”
At high noon he pulled over to the side of the highway and spread out the road map on the passenger seat. Taking out the pimpled boy’s compass he placed one of the points on Ancaster College then extended the arm out, marking pi diameters in miles, then in kilometres. The concentric circles got bigger and bigger until they stretched from the mid-Atlantic to the California coast.
Then he put the point of the compass on Leavenworth Penitentiary and marked the same pi-generated arcs in miles and kilometres. He circled the intersections of the two sets of arcs. They marked a straight line to rural Nebraska.
He pulled the compass away from the map and looked at it. So simple, he thought—but useful. He folded it and put it in his breast pocket. “Never know when a sharp point may come in handy. A shame that it’ll never design a building—but then again, once I’m in the glass house, there’ll be no need for buildings ever again.”
He didn’t notice as he pulled out into traffic that he’d been speaking his thoughts aloud. Nor did he notice the cop in the unmarked police car who was punching his licence plate into his car’s computer.
The cop looked at the notation on the computer and obeyed the order to call a number that was fourteen digits long. The call was answered quickly, and a cool voice told him not to pursue the car—that this was a federal investigation.
10
YSLAN AND HOMELAND SECURITY
YSLAN FOLLOWED PROTOCOL AND ENTERED her password—mydad,whoIneverknew—and waited for a six-tone response. When it came she entered her second password and then added her identifier—Solitaire, the private name she had for herself when she was a little girl. The phone did the digital equivalent of turning itself inside out as it moved to full encryption mode. When the transition was complete it sounded a single tone—then silence.
But only for a three count, then the voice of Hendrick H. Mallory, head of Homeland Security, was cool in her ear.
“Where exactly are you and who’s with you, Special Agent Hicks?”
She told him about the safe house, Garreth Senior and her two assistants.
“Are they trustworthy, your assistants?”
Yslan hesitated.
“Okay, I get it,” Mallory said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Of course. But you don’t completely trust them, do you?”
She downed the dregs of her cup of bad coffee and instantly longed for a cigarette. I should be over this already! Why’s it coming back now? but she said, “No. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Then neither do I. Don’t tell them about this.”
“About what?”
“When did you last hear from Harrison?”
“Sir?”
“When did you last hear from him?”
A moment of confusion from Yslan, then she said, “I don’t recall exactly . . .”
There was a long pause. Finally Mallory spoke. “Harrison’s been poisoned, or so we think. He’s in a catatonic state and the doctors can’t seem to figure out what’s caused it. All they know is that it’s something he ingested.”
Yslan’s mind raced—Leonard Harrison, her boss at the NSA, poisoned and catatonic? But before she could find words, she heard Mallory speaking again. “Make an excuse and leave the safe house. Get back to D.C. Now. You got that, Special Agent Hicks?”
Yslan didn’t answer.
“You still there, Hicks?”
“Yes sir.”
“Another thing.”
“Yes?”
“We want you to bring your synaesthetes files. All of them.”
“Who’s we?”
“Not your business. Just bring them.”
“All right, but why do you want to see my synaesthetes files?”
Yslan could hear him take a long breath. Finally he said, “Things may be in motion.”
“What things?”
“If we knew we wouldn’t be enlisting your help, Ms. Hicks.” Then he asked, “Was Harrison religious?”
“Harrison? I don’t know. Why?”
“Did he ever talk about the end of days?”
“I don’t know if he did or didn’t.”
Ignoring her evasion, he asked, “Are you, Miss Hicks? Religious?” Before she could answer that she understood a lot about religion but she’d be hard-pressed to call herself religious, Mallory moved on. “Do you too believe in the end of days?”
Yslan heard the swell of a strong current beneath his question—something in motion indeed! But before she could ask a question of her own, Mallory repeated his question; “Are you religious, Ms. Hicks?”
“What?”
“It’s not a hard question. Are you
religious?”
“Why is that important?”
“If you need to ask that question, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
“Excuse me but—”
“Do you know where Decker Roberts is?”
“Southwest Africa.”
“How about his son, Seth?”
“No. I don’t, but I don’t see—”
There was no reason to continue her question. Hendrick H. Mallory, head of Homeland Security, had hung up on her.
She gathered her wits together, then headed back into the safe house. Mr. T was lounging in the kitchen. He looked up and said, “You okay, boss?”
How do I answer that question? she thought. But she said, “Yeah, I’m fine.” She hoped she hadn’t emphasized the pronoun. She remembered one of Decker’s lectures to his acting class stating that spoken English has only two rules—if you lift the end of a sentence it makes it a question; if you emphasize a word it makes it comparative. As in I’m fine—but someone else isn’t. So she hoped she’d kept her tone level.
Ted Knight entered. He had a curious look on his face.
“I’m on to something else now,” she announced. “Nothing special, but it’s time sensitive.” She hoped the vague excuse she was offering her two assistants would be accepted at face value.
“And him?” Ted Knight asked, indicating Garreth Senior in the locked bedroom.
“Hold him for two more days, then drug him and drop him back in Seaside—in his six-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar two-bedroom house.”
The two men made no effort to cover their open looks of amazement.
Yslan didn’t care. “Harrison poisoned, catatonic,” “things may be in motion,” “end of days” just kept going round and round in her head.
• • •
Just over three hours later Yslan found herself waiting in the office of the head of Homeland Security. As she glanced at her watch, Hendrick H. Mallory entered the office with his hand out.
“Give me the files.”
She hesitated, then handed over the files on her synaesthetes—no, her Gifted. It surprised her how much real pain she felt doing it.
Mallory sat his considerable bulk in his desk chair and signalled her to sit across from him. He opened the topmost folder.
Yslan looked out the window. In the distance she could see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with the name and dates of the father she’d never met incised in it like a scar in the blackness. The father who according to her mother had loved bacon. That’s about all that she knew about him outside of his military record. He loved bacon. When she looked back at Mallory she saw that he had already finished reading the first file and was halfway through the second. In less than two minutes he’d finished the third file, and a sound that could have been a laugh slid from his almost closed lips. He put Yslan’s files to one side and reached into his desk.
He pulled out a stack of folders. Opening the one on top he flipped an eight-by-ten across the desk. It spun a full 540 then stopped in front of her—facing her full on. It showed her leaving Emerson Remi’s apartment in the middle of the night—doing up her blouse. It was from almost eight years ago.
Another photo. It also spun a turn and a half, then came to rest facing her. Leonard Harrison eyeing her as she leaned over to pick up a briefcase. This one was more recent—about two months before the bomb blasts in upper New York State.
A third, also perfectly tossed—the guy must practice—of her sitting on the box seat in the window of the Lakeshore Ramada in Toronto with Decker Roberts very close to her. As if it were the moment before a kiss—although there had been no kiss.
“Glad to see that Homeland Security is up on my sex life.” She wondered if maybe she’d been wrong when she thought this man was nothing more than a stuffed shirt—a chauffeured, bloated bureaucrat. The kind of moron who tossed around words like “cadre,” as he’d done when she’d seen him last, three days after the terrorist attack at Ancaster College. He’d asked her and Harrison, “Could Professor Frost possibly have a cadre?” After he’d gotten back in his chauffeured car, she’d turned to Harrison and asked, “What the fuck’s a cadre?”
Mallory opened another file. For the first time she noticed how soft his hands were—almost pudgy. His cuticles were perfect manicured half-moons, the liver spots on the backs of his hands slightly faded probably by the use of some expensive cream.
“Yslan Hicks—born February 6th, 1975, in Fayetteville, North Carolina; parents Helen Anne and Robert, both deceased. Father in Vietnam at age thirty-two. Mother died shortly thereafter. Raised by maternal grandparents, tobacco farmers, who lost their farm after the locust hordes arrived in 1987. Grandfather committed suicide eighteen months later. Grandmother died of cancer two years later to the day. High school, Sacred Heart Secondary. North Carolina State University, degree in criminology, recruited for Quantico training by one Leonard Harrison in 1999. Achieved rank of special agent 2004, been on the NSA’s synaesthetes’ file for five-plus years.”
“Fine. But all that is public record. I’ve testified before a congressional committee every year since—can we get back to Harrison?”
“Soon. And you’re rather testy when you testify, aren’t you? No need to answer that.” He put aside the folder from his desk and picked up the synaesthete folder that Yslan had brought. He flipped one open and read aloud in a bored monotone: “Viola Tripping, born 1967, 4 foot 3 inches tall, eighty-two pounds, blond hair usually worn long.” Without looking at her he tossed three six-by-eights across the table. They each completed their revolutions and ended up fanned out facing Yslan: Viola in a slow spin speaking for the dead in a tent in Florida, Viola doing the same in south Texas, Viola doing it in the middle of the night at the blast site at Ancaster College.
In quick succession he tossed the remaining twelve photos of Viola on the desk. The last four were from Ancaster College.
He was speaking again. “Speaker for the dead. Special talent: the ability to, if standing on the spot where a person died, recite his or her last thoughts. Most recent NSA activity at Ancaster College, where she and Decker Roberts combined to identify Professor Neil Frost as one of the people behind the terrorist act.”
Yeah, she thought, the one who had no cadre.
“Present exact whereabouts unknown but thought to be somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska. Only contact through NSA specially encrypted phone used by her caregiver. Why?”
“Viola’s very private. She insisted and we agreed. We’re not even sure it’s Kansas or Nebraska. All we know is that it’s somewhere in the American Plains States.”
“You couldn’t trace her cell?”
“No. We gave her the new model that you folks invented.”
“The untraceable one?”
“Yeah, that one.”
He nodded, then opened another folder and threw six photos on the table—Decker Roberts.
“Mr. Roberts was born in 1964 in the Glencairn district of Toronto but moved to the Junction of West Toronto, Canada, in 2001. His house there burned to the ground April 15, 2009. Currently sharing a house with a high school friend, Eddie Hundert—aka Crazy Eddie. Was working as a researcher for the Canadian Public Broadcasting Company, CPBC, on a documentary now called At the Junction.” He looked up. “Have you seen it?”
“His TV show?”
“Yes. Have you seen it?”
“The first three episodes. I have the last three on my PVR. Apparently they got a renewal for another six.”
“From CPBC?”
“Yes, I think that’s the broadcaster.”
“And they’re all produced by Trish Spence?”
Yslan was tiring of this but answered, “Yes, I think so. And Theo Denman is the other researcher. He owns a used bookshop in the Junction around the corner from where Roberts used to live.”
“Do you know that Mr. Denman is quite ill?”
“He coughed a lot when I met him but—”
“And that Ms. Spence has
become a serious hoarder?”
“Really?”
“Why that response, Agent Hicks?”
“I spoke with her briefly when I was up there looking for Roberts. She seemed very, well, together, in charge of herself—and others.”
“In public but not in private. Have you met the others?”
“Roberts’ other acquaintances?”
“Who else are we talking about here?”
“Yes. Eddie Hundert is as crazy as his nickname, but he has advanced computer skills.”
“How advanced?”
“Enough that he’s ahead of us most of the time. And there’s the girl.”
“Marina?”
“Yeah, that’s his daughter from a common-law marriage.”
“Which is now over. And the girl’s retarded.”
“Mentally challenged, not retarded.”
“Sure. Then there’s Leena, Roberts’ old girlfriend who had the terrible car accident.”
“It was a long time ago. When she was a teenager.”
“But the scars are still there, aren’t they?”
Yslan nodded.
“Don’t you think it odd that everyone Decker comes in contact with seems to have been harmed in some way?”
Yslan didn’t want to answer that question, then decided to. “Why ask a question that you already know the answer to?”
“Right. Back to Decker Roberts. He runs a successful acting studio, Pro Actors Lab. Present whereabouts—somewhere in southwest Africa. Son of a Presbyterian doctor and an atheist Jew mother. Honours degree from University of Toronto in English literature, MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama. Artistic director of North Carolina theatre, two Broadway shows, blah, blah, blah. Wife Sarah died of ALS. Special talent: the ability to tell when someone is telling the truth. Made a living sitting in on the final vetting of business executives and reporting back the truthfulness of their responses. Kidnapped from a bar in the Chelsea district of New York City and held for three days in a safe house in New Jersey”—he looked up, then added—“where you are currently interrogating Garreth Laurence Senior.” Then he recited the vital statistics—height, weight, hair colour, blood type. When he came to “left handed,” Yslan thought, Yeah left-handed, so he couldn’t have blood on his right hand from killing that girl in the igloo. Besides, he was only five years old. Right-handed, left-handed, bi—a child doesn’t have the strength to do something like that. Once again, the word “obsession” rose up in her head when thinking about former-homicide cop Garreth Laurence Senior. She admired due diligence and stick-to-it-iveness, but what Garreth Laurence Senior felt towards Decker Roberts bordered on a mania. Fuck, it was a mania. “Special Agent. Special Agent!”
The Glass House Page 5
