Blood and Ink

by Brett Adams

  “You’re sick, you know.”

  “Oh, come on. More two dollar words.”

  “No, I mean it. You’re sick in the head.” With an effort, I calmed my voice. It occurred to me that this might be my one chance to halt this juggernaut. Make this nut-job see sense. “You need to see a doctor. Is researching this novel really worth lives?”

  “Researching?” he said, incredulous. “Wait—wait. You think this is just about ‘researching’?” He laughed. “Haven’t you got it yet?”

  He paused and in that scintilla my mind closed around a truth I already knew.

  “My novel, Jack: you’re living it.”

  He whooped in delight. His voice, when he spoke again, was ecstatic.

  “Jack, I’m not researching my novel anymore. Haven’t been for weeks. I’m writing it. Now. ‘Life is a text,’ and I was born with this text in me.”

  “Post-modern bullshit,” I said. “Authority-creep. Lit majors wanting high priesthood over all of life.” Although, if I remembered right, that line came from Barthes, The Death of the Author. I could go along with that right now.

  “No, no!” said Hiero, urgent, sincere. “It’s true. If there was ever a doubt, this is the experiment that proves the theory.”

  I reached a park bench resting in the shade of a solitary oak whose branches were still thick with leaves, showing touches of yellow. I sank onto the bench’s cool metal and cradled my head in one hand. It was beginning to throb.

  Hiero changed tack: “You stole Li Min’s journal.”

  The words tore through me like a bolt—how did he know that?

  He said, “Didn’t you ever wonder what MC Griffen meant?”

  I had. And I had discovered its meaning. But I let him say it: “Main Character.”

  “So I’m writing your story?”

  “Professor,” said Hiero in a patrician tone, “characters don’t write their own stories.”

  My pulse throbbed in my neck once, twice. Then the enormity of Hiero’s crime crashed over me.

  “You’re the author,” I whispered. Somehow, the realization that Hiero was writing his story with my life, had robbed me of agency, brought home the horror of Li Min’s murder more than the sight of her cold body had. He had stolen her entire future.

  “Got it in one.”

  “But, Hiero—” I found tears in my eyes. “You murdered a girl. Her life for . . . for a story?”

  “Why are you shocked? Great art requires great sacrifice. History is replete with art bought with blood. Wasn’t Van Gogh’s Starry Night worth the price of an ear?”

  “Van Gogh was insane. And, besides, he mutilated himself.”

  “Fah. My point is the currency; immortal art costs mortal blood.” He paused. “I confess there are perks. Li Min might have been a virgin, but she was a tiger in bed. So overwhelming I nearly left it too late. 300mg intravenous heroin at ten in the morning, while you were winging your way to Hong Kong. Would’ve been an interesting scene if you’d caught me rushing out of her apartment with my pants around my ankles. If the story had climaxed there, it would have made my novel more of a novella.”

  I wiped snot from my nose and sat up straighter.

  “I will stop you.”

  “No, you won’t, Jack. You’re going to try, try again, to prevent another person from dying. And fail again.” His voice brightened. “But hang in there. You’ll get your chance.”

  “I’ll just stop, then. Right here.”

  “As much as that would suck, Jack—I mean, I’d have some serious rewriting to do—I won’t stop. And I think you know it. History would label you the guy who could’ve made a difference, but opted instead to sulk.”

  “You bastard—”

  “Shut-up and listen. I’ll say this once. I’ve had to move the next one up a bit.”

  “Next one?” I said dumbly.

  “Consult the usual sources,” he said, “but do it quick. I’m on recon now. I’ll give her, oh, let’s say forty-eight hours. And, Jack, that’s being generous. She’s really . . .” He paused. “Not my type.”

  It dawned on me. Hiero was looking at her right now.

  “Bye, Jack. And take care. Remember, the clock’s ticking.”

  “Please—”

  “Oh, and, Jack: bring your A-game. This one’s closer to home.”

  With a blip the call died.

  I was left staring at the ground, not really seeing the mud and cigarette butts.

  Closer to home?

  28

  “Kim here.”

  “Mrs Griffen?” said Marten.

  “Griffen?” came the reply, and Marten listened closely for the next words. What did this woman think of the man who had been her husband, shared her bed for fifteen years?

  “Your info is dated by—Who am I talking to?”

  Marten wasn’t sure what emotion she heard in the voice of Jack Griffen’s ex-wife.

  “DCI Marten Lacroix of the Violent Crimes Directorate, City of London Police.”

  The silence on the line was easier to read. Marten spoke into it. “When was the last time you heard from your ex-husband, Mrs Griffen?”

  “It’s Sparkes and, oh, about ten seconds ago.”

  Marten rushed on. “Did he say where he was calling from?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t tell you if he had, Inspector Lacroix.”

  “I must warn you, there are severe penalties for obs—”

  “Save your breath, Marten. I’m not an idiot.”

  Change of tack required.

  “Aren’t you concerned for Jack?”

  “Of course I’m concerned.”

  “Then won’t you help me?”

  “Help you what?”

  (Put the psycho behind bars.)

  “Help him,” said Marten.

  “What sort of help do you think Jack needs?”

  I’m supposed to be asking the questions, lady.

  “He’s clearly—”

  “There is nothing clear about Jack’s situation.” Marten heard a sigh, a sign perhaps that she might finally have a foot in the door.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This Hiero . . .”

  Ah. ‘Hiero.’

  “What has Jack told you about . . . Hiero?”

  “His name is Hieronymus Beck. An exchange student, one that Jack took a special interest in.”

  “You do realize,” said Marten, unable to keep a smile creeping onto her face, “that the faculty has no record of a H. Beck. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Bother me? Ms. Lacroix, are you a married woman?”

  “Yes ma’am. Seven years of bliss.”

  “Wonderful. And clearly you have an imagination, so try picturing this: You have a child—”

  “I don’t have to pretend about that. My boy is almost five.” Marten’s mind flitted to David wearing his cookie monster backpack, which was larger than him. Did Ben remember he couldn’t pack nuts in David’s play lunch?

  “Excellent. Now pretend with me that you travel home today to find—God forbid—your son sprawled in the hallway of your home. Unresponsive. Breath shallow. Temperature spiking.”

  “Kim—”

  “No. Stick with me, Marten. The bomb that has flattened your son, and may yet take his life, is called Meningococcal Septicemia.”

  An image flashed through Marten’s mind, of David collapsed on the hallway parquetry, cold and still, like a disregarded toy. She shivered.

  “They tell you he’s not dead but, Marten, to your mother’s eye, he sure looks dead. And the experience puts you through the wringer, but—after tears and worry and prayers—he makes it. The sun shines again . . .”

  “But?” Marten couldn’t help it, she was hanging on Kim’s words now.

  “Then you discover that your child’s illness was the decoy. Fate threw that to divert your attention from her true mischief.”

  Marten’s gaze fell again to the framed photo sitting on her desk. She was already seeing afresh the
face of her husband, Ben, as Kim went on.

  “Jack was falling apart—from the inside out. The façade stayed in place till the end, until that’s all there was.”

  Marten wanted to press: ‘What happened?’ but something in Kim’s tone told her she was done. Whatever urge had led her to spill her guts to a total stranger had passed.

  “You asked me if it bothered me,” Kim said. “What bothers me is to talk with a man that looks like my Jack, sounds like him, but . . . isn’t. Everything about Jack bothers me.”

  “But you still take his calls.”

  The phone speaker pulsed in Marten’s ear. Another call.

  “I have to go. Thanks for speaking to me. And please—if you have any info about Jack that might help me find him. It could save his life.”

  “Jack’s not a liar, Marten. That much I still know.”

  Maybe he believes his own bullshit, thought Marten, but held her tongue and hung-up.

  29

  Melodrama.

  If you’re like me, the word makes you think of over-acting and sickly-sweet soap opera.

  Hiero and I once argued over the true meaning of Melodrama. In a lecture I’d given my definition: a story with a who, a where, and a how, but lacking a why.

  Without a why to bind them together, you just had a bunch of people doing a bunch of stuff. That wasn’t story; that was life.

  Melodrama was a horse chase into a blind canyon, and a Mexican stand-off, while the damsel watches on with a handkerchief clutched to her face. Drama would give the damsel a Colt Peacemaker stashed in her skirt, and a grudge stretching back years that kicked off the whole love triangle.

  Hiero said that was crap, that my version was simply melodrama with more moving parts. He said melodrama was anything that didn’t make your soul bleed.

  30

  “He said, ‘Closer to home,’ Kim. I mean—what the hell does that mean?”

  “Calm down, Jack.”

  “You say that like I have a choice, to calm down.”

  “Okay, okay. But you’re scaring me.”

  “Good.”

  There was silence, and I thought she was going to hang up.

  “Someone called.”

  My grip on the handset tightened.

  “Who? Him?”

  “No. A detective. From London. Marten something. Marten Lacroix.”

  “What did he want?”

  “She asked questions about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “If you’d contacted me, and . . . other questions.”

  It wasn’t like Kim to be vague.

  “What—” The call cut-off warning beep interrupted me, telling me I had a minute left. Goddamn public phones. One step above carrier pigeons, and without the personality.

  As much as I burned to know what questions this Marten guy had fired at Kim, time forced me back to the pressing issue: “’Closer to home’. It was the last thing he said. What could he mean?”

  “Well, where’s home, Jack?” Her question brought me up short.

  “Home?”

  Beep-beep. Thirty seconds.

  “Jack?”

  “I have to go. He’s going to kill, and I’m all that stands in his way.” I waited for Kim to laugh at my melodrama. When she didn’t, I felt a spike of fear.

  Rushing now, she said: “Go to the police. You have to. Please. For me.”

  For me. I couldn’t remember the last time Kim had said that.

  “I can’t. They don’t believe me. I’m it. Time to put my jocks over my jeans.”

  “Jack—”

  “Bye, Kim. You probably won’t hear from me, for a while anyway. I dropped my last dollar on—” I nearly said ‘you’ “—this call.”

  “What will you do?” She sounded horrified, before the precision machinery of British Telecom cut her off.

  “That,” I said in answer to her question, as I gazed through the grimed glass of the phone booth at tourists wandering about the plaza, “is the question.”

  31

  If you want to see how someone’s mind works, observe the connections they make. The little switches in speech that seem like non sequiturs, but closer scrutiny reveals to be brain tells.

  The night Hiero burst into my office proclaiming, ‘The gods are hard to handle,’ brandishing a scalping knife, was not the first time I had seen that knife.

  He told me its story. Indeed, he called it a ‘storied knife’.

  It was a gift from his father, who had obtained it from a cop in LA. The knife, he said, had been used in a real-life scalping in an old case. The cop had purloined it from the evidence lock-up, and sold it to Hiero’s father for ten bucks.

  Hiero scratched at rust caking the etching on the blade, wondering aloud if the blood had been spilled on the streets of LA, or the plains of the Wild West.

  I said, “Sure he didn’t get it throwing darts at balloons?” The knife looked like a carnival prize to me

  Hiero grunted. “This from the man who thinks Batman didn’t kill the Joker.”

  It was a reference to the famous graphic novel, The Killing Joke, which pits Batman against his nemesis, The Joker. I thought (silly me) the connection that prompted Hiero’s comment was the final setting of the Killing Joke, an amusement park.

  If I’d paid closer attention, I might have noticed a much more disturbing connection. That between hero and villain.

  32

  I sat clutching my head in my hands, peering through the gaps between my fingers at the bible slotted into the pew in front of me.

  What I felt was shame, I decided. The sensation was novel. It was like meeting an identical twin with poor hygiene and no concept of personal space.

  I closed my eyes, and watched memories of the morning parade past.

  First came the face of the lady. She wasn’t the first person I’d asked for money, but she was the first who had spoken to me. If you can call a thorough telling off speaking.

  She had looked me in the eye through her bifocals, as we stood there on the sidewalk by the intersection. Her words had been calm, her manner lucid—no expletives, no heat—and she had told me in her matronly tones that I was a worthless reprobate, subsisting on the ill-placed kindness of my betters, and staining the streets with my very presence.

  After that, I’d pilfered a pair of pharmacy sunglasses with mirrored lenses so no one could look into my soul again, while I scrutinized everyone who passed from head to toe, and picked my targets.

  There had been more like that old woman, though none so eloquent. Many refused even that one-way eye contact. Some swore, and walked through me; and occasionally, someone dropped 50p into my outstretched palm.

  I sat up and dug my wallet from my jeans pocket. I tipped the coin purse upside down and counted the fruit of my morning’s depredations: six pounds, twenty pence, and a lollipop.

  It wasn’t fair. I should have been angry—I should have put that old bag in her place. I should have said: “I am Professor Jack Griffen, and I am selling my pride to save a girl’s life.”

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even muster anger. Instead, I had felt shame.

  Some part of me—some part truer, deeper?—asserted that shame not anger was the right response. Whoever that pontificating prat was deep inside me, I wanted to haul him into the rainbow haze of the stained-glass-filtered light and slap him.

  A microphone squawked with feedback. At the front of the sanctuary, a young man began talking about an upcoming camp, before he was interrupted by a lady sitting in the pew in front of me.

  “Offering,” she said.

  “Oh,” said the man at the microphone. “Pass the offering bags around. Today’s collection is for Im Jai House orphanage in Thailand. If you’re a guest with us”—Did he glance at me?—“please be our guest and let the bags pass.”

  From the corner of my eye I watched the offering bag snake its way toward me from the front pew.

  In my palm, the six pounds, twenty pence sat heavy. The lo
llipop had somehow found its way into my mouth.

  The bag arrived at my pew. A man standing in the aisle helped it round the corner, and stretched to pass it to me.

  ‘The bag’ turned out to be a beanie. The touch of its coarse wool triggered a memory of a ski holiday with Kim and Tracey. Funny, Tracey had spent more time hunting two-dollar coins revealed by the late thaw than skiing. The thought made me smile.

  This beanie sagged to a point with coins already placed in it.

  I curled my hand around the last money I had in the world—save the credit on my phone—and plunged it to the bottom of the beanie.

  I opened my hand. And my fingertips brushed paper money.

  Its touch was an electric shock.

  My hand closed around the bills.

  With a glance along the pew to my right, I withdrew my hand, and passed the beanie to a boy sitting a couple of spaces over. He took the bag, but he stared at me.

  I tried to smile. Failed.

  Ignoring him, I faced front again and tried to count by feel the paper bills hidden in my grip.

  It was an impossible task, but I enjoyed the satisfyingly thick wad of notes and dreamed that it was at least a couple of hundred pounds. Enough for a bed, and a bite, and a train ticket to . . . somewhere.

  Such a mundane wish. Sleep, food, transit. Hiero had pushed me into a fugitive thriller. Maybe I needed to switch genres. Superman never had to worry about having clean underpants. Or maybe a hard-boiled detective story—something from the Golden Age of detective fiction, the 20s and 30s in California. I could be Hammett’s Sam Spade; or better—Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe. Chandler was the lyrical writer.

  “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything . . . He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world.”

  But Marlowe was forever getting sapped—hard-boiled speak for getting hit on the head. I didn’t want to get sapped.

  There was something else that didn’t fit with Marlowe. I couldn’t remember him stealing from anyone who didn’t deserve it. My gaze flickered to the front of the sanctuary, where a couple of musicians had shuffled onto seats. A song was in the offing.