He bet right, this time.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Fish,” said Zimmerman as they gathered their jackets. “We’ll be in touch.”
Fish ran for the toilet the second the door clicked. He grabbed the phone on the way, hoping the line would reach. The line did reach. Fish called his accountant.
“There’s trouble,” he told his accountant.
The accountant was supposed to be really, really good. The Devil had recommended him. The guy had sold his soul, according to the Devil, to be a very good accountant.
“Yeah?” said the accountant.
Fish knew this game. The accountant didn’t want to say anything on an unsecured line. Fish would have to do the talking.
“The FBI just came to see me,” he said. “I need to get hold of—”
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Fish.”
Fish? What had happened to Mister Fish?
“Listen,” he commanded. “Meet me at four this afternoon.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
“You listen, Fish. I got a lot going on, and there’s no way in hell I can make it to—”
“You’ll make it,” said Fish, and hung up.
IN THE END, it was Fish who had trouble getting there.
He called the airport and told them to get his plane ready to go to Mexico.
“We can’t do that, Mr. Fish,” said the airport.
“Listen,” he said. “You call George Kaplan at the FAA, and ask him if you can or cannot—”
George Kaplan at the FAA was paid good money to keep Assurance Mutual flying without a lot of regulatory red tape.
“Mr. Kaplan,” said the airport, “has been placed on leave by the FAA so that he can assist a congressional fact-finding panel with certain inquiries. I have been asked to give you contact information for a Special Agent Zimmerman, sir, if—”
Fish hung up.
He frowned out the window, massaging his neck.
He paid a freelance pilot to zip him across the country, across the border, to an airstrip outside the world’s longest-running party.
He charged up the stairs to the swimming pool, anticipating the usual backdrop of music and shouting, zoo animals, cocaine, half-naked billionaires, and a talking dog. It was the backdrop against which he had learned to do business (when he had to do business). But the pool area was only populated by the pool guy and his long-handled brush.
“Where is everyone?” asked Fish.
The pool guy said he was just there to clean the pool.
Inside, a crew in white jumpsuits shampooed or replaced carpets, cleaned bathrooms, washed or replaced walls, yelling back and forth in Spanish. As Fish made his way through the house, he felt they were yelling about him. After he had gone by, they laughed.
Just as he was sure his accountant had been and gone, if he had come at all, he met him by the pool.
“You waited,” said Fish. “That’s good.”
The accountant nodded at him.
They faced each other without shaking hands.
“Now,” growled Fish, “there’s no fucking phone line for you to worry about, so I want some answers. I want to know why the FBI is asking me questions about very private arrangements. Arrangements you made—”
The accountant punched him very hard in the face and told him to shut the fuck up.
Fish fell, clutching his face, but got back up again. He weaved, almost slipping into the pool, and decided not to hit the accountant back.
“You will recall,” said the accountant, “that I warned you against a number of those arrangements, and you would not listen. I told you that there were arrangements that could be protected, and others that could not. But you know everything. Now listen to this, and know this: I don’t work for you. I only came down here to see the look on your face when I broke your nose. Do not call me again.”
The accountant walked off and disappeared down the stairs.
Fish sat down beside the pool. He let his feet and legs soak, although he was fully dressed. Shoes and all. It felt good.
Water sprayed him.
Fish looked up to see the pool guy regarding him with distaste.
“You’re in my way,” he said.
PAYING FOR THE PRIVATE FLIGHT to Mexico and back used up Fish’s ready cash. In Chicago, walking down the street to his building, he stopped at one of the new automatic bank-teller machines that were starting to pop up all over the place.
The machine said that it was unable to complete his transaction, and that it was sorry.
Upstairs in his living room, with the dark of Lake Michigan reflecting his broken nose and swollen face, he called a special, privileged number. It was the number the bank gave you when you had enough money to cause trouble if you took it out all at once. A tired-sounding voice picked up.
He told the bank who he was, and before he could ask about the ATM, the voice told him his accounts had been frozen and seized.
“Which?” asked Fish, confused and in pain. “Frozen or seized?”
“Both. Some have been frozen; the others have been confiscated and are no longer considered, you know, yours.”
Some of Fish’s accounts were in banks overseas. Some were American.
“It’s mostly the overseas accounts that are frozen,” the voice informed him.
Fish launched a screaming fit that might have lasted half an hour if the voice hadn’t hung up on him.
People don’t have to take your shit if you don’t have any money.
THE NEXT DAY, Fish went to his office at the top of the Assurance Mutual office building, the twenty-fifth tallest building in the world.
“Did you know that forty percent of the world’s tallest buildings are owned by insurance companies?” the architect had asked him, back when it was still just a blueprint.
“Wow,” Fish had answered. “No.”
The offices were quiet. The halls were dark. The doors were all closed.
A note waited on his desk. It said that everyone’s Friday paycheck had bounced sky-high, and the comptroller had advised everyone not to clock in again until they could be sure things were going to change. Under the comptroller’s signature, a PS informed him that his own check, Fish’s, had bounced like a refrigerated SuperBall.
He picked up his desk phone.
It sounded dead, at first. Then it rang in his hand.
“Hello?” he said.
“Mr. Fish?” asked a voice, somewhat familiar.
“Who is this?”
“Zimmerman, Mr. Fish. FBI. Are you in your office?”
“I am.”
“I’d like to ask you to remain there, Mr. Fish, until—”
Fish didn’t remain. He laid the phone down on his desk blotter, and ran for one of the three separate elevator banks installed by his friend the architect.
It was a long ride down. Long enough for him to devote serious thought to whether or not the FBI had provided enough agents for Zimmerman to cover all the ins and outs of the Assurance Tower.
The doors hissed open on an empty lobby. No. The FBI had not.
“Underresourced chimps,” he muttered, and ran like a fugitive.
HE CALLED THE airport and tried to speak with any of a number of freelance pilots. Whenever anyone asked who he was, even if he lied, they asked him to hold.
He called the car-rental place near the bus station.
They were not on Zimmerman’s call list, apparently. They said for him to come right down there and they’d fix him up.
He drove south toward Texas.
Sometimes, by daylight, he thought cars were following him. When he pulled over to get gas, they zoomed on. Or sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they pulled off and looked like they were watching him.
He stopped only once for a bite to eat. He walked into a Carl’s Jr., but everyone was watching him, so he left.
SOUTH OF BROWNSVILLE, he parked, got out, and left the door open. He took not
hing with him.
The fence at the border was much taller than he’d thought it would be. But it was unlit, and this portion seemed unwatched.
It was almost a relief, the idea of starting over. The little money in his Mexican accounts would count for something, down here. After a time, who knew?
He climbed the fence. Every second, his back crawled, waiting for Border Patrol bullets, or the glare of spotlights.
Over the top. Halfway down, he let go and landed on his feet.
Catlike, he thought.
He was free. Not rich, but free.
Free was better.
Who would have thought it? He almost wept.
Nearby, across the street from the fence, an open bar with wide screens for windows. He could see the bartender inside, a big, sad-looking Mexican man.
He had enough pocket money for a beer or two, then he’d have to find a bench until the banks opened.
He ordered a beer, but when he went to pay for it, someone said, “I got this,” and handed the bartender a brand-new American five.
The Devil.
The bartender brought them both beers, and they took a first sip together.
“You sure this is what you want?” asked the Devil.
“What I want,” gasped Fish, “is for you to return my phone calls when I’m in a hotel room full of feds. You promised—”
“I promised you’d have money. You had it.”
“We set up companies and organizations! That’s not just money. Those things are meant to last!”
“They do, if you treat them right.”
“You promised!”
“No, I didn’t. Anyhow, given what you’ve got left, which is this bar and that fence, are you sure this is what you want? Because … well, let me tell you something about that fence—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” sighed Fish. “If that’s all you have for me is some advice about the border, you can shove it up your ass. I want my money back. I want what you promised me.”
The Devil looked disappointed, but not surprised.
A second later, FBI agents from the Brownsville field office burst through the door and performed a felony takedown on Fish. His beer bottle went flying. His broken nose radiated agony. His face pressed the barroom floor.
“You can’t!” he cried, struggling to raise his head, to make himself understood. “This is Mexico, you retards!” He spit out a bloody tooth.
“This is Brownsville, numbnuts,” answered the agent responsible for cuffing him. “That’s the farm-league baseball park fence you climbed. Way to go. The border’s half a block down, still.”
Fish laughed. A little, at first. Then more. He got it under control as they walked him to their unmarked car, but a curious, eerie glow ignited in his eye—not unlike swamp gas or Saint Elmo’s fire—and never went out again until the day he died.
27.
We’ll Always Have Rome
Dayton, Ohio, 2005
THE DEVIL, BORED STIFF with being in the hospital, started sleeping more than was normal for him.
He dreamed about the second time he’d won Arden back, long ago, in Rome.
A SPRING EVENING, near the beginning of the empire. The Devil crossed the forum in late afternoon, crisp paving stones under his sandals, the smells of the city in his nose. Smoke, food, garbage. Horseshit. Sweat.
Rome reminded him of Egypt, with its bigness: giant temples, giant columns, giant armies. A suitable challenge to Heaven.
Maybe it would be good enough for Arden. Maybe she’d come back.
He was watching a street show when the idea struck him.
The show featured a monkey who pretended to find a coin in his ear.
He had to laugh. Great civilizations boasted the weirdest entertainment. This was and always would be true.
The monkey was a good sign.
AT HOME THAT NIGHT, the Devil stood in the courtyard, looking up.
“Arden,” he said, “you’ve got to see Rome. God would have made Rome Himself, if He had an imagination.”
The wind blew. The sky was cloudless, like a sea.
He went inside, and read poetry by firelight until it began to rain, and then he went to bed.
WHEN HE WOKE UP in the morning, she was there beside him.
The Devil roared with joy and crushed her to him.
Her eyes glowed. She cried his name over and over.
They didn’t leave the bed for three days, and when they did, it was just to buy a new bed.
IT BEGAN like Egypt.
They had a house with a courtyard, at the crest of a hill.
At dawn and dusk, the sun touched the marble city with fire, and they watched from their windows, admiring. This time, they decided, they would not try to push things. He would not teach them astronomy. She would not play angel music for mortals.
They were in Rome. They would be Romans.
For now, they would learn about each other. A thousand years had got between them.
But one day at the local market, when they were shopping for their supper, a clay tile slipped loose from a restaurant rooftop, tumbled two stories through the air, and shattered over Arden’s head.
She ducked—too late—and dropped her purchases to hold her head in her hands. But there wasn’t much blood, and she didn’t even feel dizzy.
The Devil held her to him, shocked and terrified.
“I’m all right,” she said.
So they bought for a second time all the things she had dropped, and went home to supper. And the sun set, and the city, as always, appeared to burn. Then the lights of candles and braziers and the lanterns of boats on the Tiber made Rome a jewel in the dark, the center of Heaven and Earth.
IN THE MORNING Arden did not wake up.
The Devil was half mad, at first. He screamed and shook her, and would have run through the city in monstrous forms if a storm hadn’t broken, bringing him to his senses with lightning and sharp thunder. So he calmed himself, and hired some street urchins to go and bring him a physician.
“What physician?” asked one of the boys, nearly naked and streaked with filth.
“Any physician!” cried the Devil. “All of them!”
And he returned to her and tried again to wake her. What knowledge he knew and what strengths he had, he used. But something in him was no longer able, or allowed, to heal an angel. She was beyond him.
So he had to trust the doctors.
The doctors came and failed, one by one.
“She will awaken or she will not,” they told him.
The first one who told him this, he ate. After that, he was a better listener.
WHEN SOME DAYS had gone by, he dressed their bed like an altar, and covered her in white silks. When he fed her, she swallowed, like a cleverly made automaton. And the Devil realized that she might lie like this forever. It was so cruel it made him spit laughter, that they would be together, finally … but like this.
He fed and bathed her. He did not feed himself, or bathe.
He stared out windows, at home, or stumbled aimlessly in the streets. He went out less and less often, until a familiar sleepiness began to steal over him. But he knew the dangers of that sleep, and shook it off.
“No,” he said. He stood, and walked to Arden’s bedside. He took her hand.
Action was needed.
Inspiration bloomed in him like a bursting sun.
Not just any action, but the sort of action that had brought them together to begin with.
His heart thumped in his chest. His pulse quickened. Slowly, with impossible tenderness, he drew back the bedclothes. Even more slowly, as if handling crystal, he undressed Arden until her sleeping form lay naked on the mattress.
His eyes drank in her pale skin. The sheer bareness and simplicity of her whispered to his blood, which ran faster, until his jaw slackened and his breath became a lumbering, heavy thing. Trembling, he stripped away his own clothes and lay down beside her. Pressed against her and kissed her still lip
s until sadness and desire became a single thing inside him.
He rose to his knees, gasping because the weight of desire was almost too much. Shaking, he parted her legs, and it was all he could do not to just let himself fall over her.
He stroked her thigh with an unsteady hand. Stroked the softness of her lower belly.
His blood and breath heaved like a hundred work gangs, but he forced himself to concentrate, to move softly. He coiled his arms around her legs, lowered his open mouth between her thighs, and kissed her there with a sad, yawning hunger until night fell dark around them.
But she didn’t awaken, and she didn’t move.
At dawn she lay still against him, and didn’t move, and when the pulsing and heaving crested inside him and surged and flooded the bedsheets, he lifted his head at last and screamed a silent scream. In the red light of morning, he fell exhausted against her and slept without dreaming.
THAT EVENING, shuffling in rags past the open baths, he found himself, by chance, in one of Rome’s quiet places. It was a pleasant slope of manicured lawn, peppered here and there with white stones, low shrubs, and stands of umbrella pine.
The place had a serene quality that worked on him, and within minutes, if he could not be said to have quite returned to himself, he at least felt less as if something were devouring him. His senses cleared, and he became aware of several voices, nearby, in earnest conversation.
One of the voices was familiar.
No … it wasn’t the voice. It was a sense of presence, like a trembling on the air, as if someone had just strummed a harp.
“It can’t be,” said the Devil to himself.
The last time—the only time—he had sensed this presence, had been twenty years ago on a hill over Bethlehem, in Judah. He and two astronomers from the East had followed the light of an exploding supernova, and stumbled across a Jewish family caring for a baby in a cowshed. The woman had given birth to a boy, and the boy lay in a feeding trough with this supernatural soul music playing all around him.
The astronomers, like everyone else, were silly with religion. They immediately connected the child with the exploding star, and fell to worshipping. Everyone seemed to expect the Devil to do the same, so he fetched from his camel a curiosity he’d picked up in Babylon, a wooden puzzle box containing frankincense, and presented it to the father.
Up Jumps the Devil Page 22
