Powder Burn

by Blake Banner

  There was a ping and I picked up my cell. It was a message from Marni.

  They are observations on the text

  I sighed and typed, I know. Are they smart or dumb?

  She stayed online but didn’t answer for a while, then started typing. They’re def not dumb. Pretty deep. I did math to a pretty high level bt this is beyond me.

  I sat thinking. After another silence, she typed, you good?

  I felt a momentary irritation. Her question was about a year too late. I typed, Yeah, thx and went off line.

  Marni was a world-class climatologist. Math and physics were a major part of what she did, and Zack’s annotations in the margins of textbooks on advanced mathematics were beyond her. And Zack was a twenty-year-old, unemployed, illegal immigrant, living in a squat. I thought again about how the Peabodys had described Hans and Hattie as so smart they were almost scary. And Lin had said Bran and his ‘special friends’ were smarter than everybody else, like the Big Bang Theory on steroids. I wondered how smart Charlie was… Or had been.

  I looked up at the sky again and thought that in my case, it was the stars that were too bright, and weren’t letting me see the sky.

  Then something caught my eye. It was an entry in pencil on Charlie’s calendar. It was for Friday 6th, just three days earlier, when he was supposed to be missing, but just one day before he texted me. It was so faint it was almost invisible, and I had to look close to work it out. It said, Dojo, W116 St.

  I Googled martial arts schools near West 116th and found there were two, but only one was actually on West 116th. I sat and stared at it a moment. The handwriting, as far as I could make out, was the same as all the other entries, but it was the only entry in pencil. And it was the only entry that related to any kind of martial arts gym or sports of any sort.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out the small key I had taken from Charlie’s back door. It had a small number stamped into it: number 23. A locker at the dojo. That was what he had wanted me to find at his apartment. The obvious question then was, what was in the locker? And the obvious answer was, his laptop and his diary, or instructions on how to find them.

  And that led me to two more questions: why had each of these remarkable people felt it necessary to keep a diary, and what was in those diaries and on those laptops that the men in the blue Audi, or whoever they worked for, were prepared to kill for?

  I wondered for a moment if perhaps it wasn’t time to ask them, but before I could pursue that thought, there was a ring at my door. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight o’clock.

  I gathered the books and the calendars, put them in a drawer, then went to the door and peered through the spy hole. I was surprised, but told myself I shouldn’t be, then opened the door and frowned.

  “Dr. Salcedo. The porter didn’t notify me...”

  She raised a very attractive eyebrow at me. “I have had cooler welcomes, but not many.”

  I smiled and stood back. “Forgive me, he’s supposed to notify me if anyone is coming up.”

  She returned the smile and stepped inside. “City girls,” she said. “We seem to find out early.”

  “How to open doors with just a smile? Can I offer you a drink?”

  “Vodka martini. I could kill for one. You have a beautiful apartment.”

  I didn’t answer. She walked to the terrace door while I mixed her drink. She said, “You smoke.”

  I joined her and handed her her glass. “Sometimes I even burst into flames. Not that I am not delighted that you decided to visit, but I am wondering why.”

  “You’re not the most welcoming man in the world, are you, Lacklan Walker?”

  She stepped outside and looked out at the lights in the park. Then she turned and rested her ass on the terrace wall, watching me, waiting for an answer.

  I said, “It depends on who I am welcoming and why. You didn’t seem very keen to talk to me today, and yet now, here you are, at my apartment, unannounced. How did you know I wasn’t at the opera, or dining with the British Consul?”

  She smiled for the first time. There was no warmth or humor in it. She said, “How is Antony? Is he back from L.A. already?”

  I gave a small laugh and sat. “OK, so you realized I would figure out that you’d lied to me about your relationship with Charlie and decided you’d better come along and do some damage limitation.”

  “Are you always this blunt and insensitive?”

  I shook my head and sipped my whiskey, watching her. As I put my glass down, I said, “No. Sometimes I can be brutal, especially when people insist on playing games and wasting my time. What do you want, Dr. Salcedo?”

  She turned away and for a moment looked genuinely upset. “Boy, that was harsh. If you must know, I came to explain to you about my relationship with Charlie, because if it became public knowledge, I would lose my job. I also came because I thought you looked interesting, and I wanted to know what you were about. Most people are judgmental, though few have the right to be. I get the feeling you’re not.”

  My second cigarette had burned out in the ashtray. I took a third from the pack, flipped my old brass Zippo and lit up while she watched me. I exhaled and took a sip of whiskey.

  “So tell me.”

  “Charlie is nearly ten years younger than me, but he is a very exceptional young man. It’s not just his seemingly inexhaustible energy! That can actually be quite wearing…” She glanced at me and blushed. “I didn’t mean… Though…” She sighed and gave a small laugh. “Let’s get that over with and out of the way. We were lovers, and he was wonderful and inexhaustible! But it was much more than that. He was a prodigy. His ability to absorb, retain and understand information was exceptional. I had never met anyone quite like that. I doubt I ever will again.”

  “Is that all it was, an affair?”

  “It was more than an affair. We had real feelings for each other, even though we knew it couldn’t go anywhere. It was hard to stop it, but I began to realize that I was putting my whole career and my future at risk. So, Friday, I told him it had to stop.” She gave a painful sigh. “It sounds ruthless, but what choice did I have?”

  “That must have been hard to do. How did you handle it?”

  She frowned at me curiously. “I tried to make it as formal as possible. I asked him to see me in my office…”

  I spoke with no special inflection. “So there would be no risk of falling prey to your feelings for him.”

  She didn’t answer, just watched and waited.

  I went on, “But then, you were in love with his exceptional mind, not his inexhaustible body, so perhaps that wasn’t so difficult after all.”

  “You make it sound so cheap and ridiculous. I thought you would not be judgmental, but you’re just like everybody else.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, Dr. Salcedo, maybe it would help if you stopped lying to me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the Mezcal, on Saturday night. The Saturday after you say you called Charlie into your office to break things off. And I’m talking about Charlie’s friends. You doubt you will ever meet anyone as remarkable as Charlie, and yet on Friday, you met four people who were at least as remarkable as him.” I drew on my cigarette, took a slug of whiskey and tapped ash. Then, I said, “Dr. Salcedo, you are full of bullshit. I don’t make what you say sound cheap, you do. Now, how about you sit down and start telling me the truth?”

  She became very serious, looked down into her glass, and said, “I see.”

  “Do you? Don’t be too sure, Doctor. There may still be things you don’t see. I would not advise you to set off on a new course of Plan B lies. And believe me, if you do, you will be in a very deep heap of shit. Your city girl smile don’t open no doors here.”

  She nodded and after a moment she sat.

  “This is a little humiliating.”

  “More lies?”

  She flashed a look at me. “Give me a break, will you? Just let up a litt
le. You made your point. Not everything I said was a lie.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s true that I had Charlie come and see me on that Friday, and I did tell him that we had to break up, but he didn’t react the way I expected.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She gave me a very direct look. “I thought he’d be upset.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  She gave her head a small shake. “No. He said that it made sense and that I was right to focus on my career. But…” She frowned, like she was trying to make sense of her own memories.

  I said, “But what?”

  “It wasn’t a kind of self sacrificial, emotional, ‘I only want the best for you’ kind of thing, before the guy goes and jumps off Brooklyn Bridge. He meant it. He was cheerful, bright-eyed: ‘Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, you really need to focus on your career right now, we can be friends,’ kind of thing. It shook me up.”

  I frowned at her. “I’m not following you, Doctor.”

  She gave a small laugh, but made it sound annoyed. “You may not have noticed, Mr. Walker, but I am a woman, and I have always considered myself quite an attractive one. I expected him to be upset, but he wasn’t fazed. What can I say? It wounded my pride. Also…”

  I was smiling. “It made you realize that you liked him more than you had thought.”

  She sighed. “Am I that predictable?”

  I nodded. “And I can tell you it would only have lasted until you’d got him hooked again. As soon as he responded, you would have dumped him and kicked him in the balls before he could get back on his feet.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “I’m a realist, and I know there is nothing so cruel on this planet as a woman scorned. So what were you doing there on Saturday?”

  “I called him and asked if we could meet. I wanted to talk to him. He said he was meeting some friends at the Mezcal, why didn’t I join them, and later he and I could talk.”

  “So you had no idea what his friends were like.”

  She became abstracted for a few moments, smiling to herself. “They laughed a lot. I got that they were joyful people. And I got that they were smart—very smart—like him. But to be honest, I didn’t spend long enough with them to get much more than that.”

  I crushed out my cigarette and took another sip of my drink, savoring it for a long moment before swallowing.

  “So what happened? Did you tell him you’d had a change of heart?”

  “The party broke up. Hans and Hattie got a taxi home. Zack and Bran said they’d walk. It was only about half a mile to where they lived, and Charlie came home with me.”

  I stared at her for a long moment. “You went home with Charlie on Saturday night, June 30th.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, as far as I am aware, you are the last person to have seen him. Because right after that, he disappeared.”

  She held my eye, and after a moment she said, “I know.”

  NINE

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She stood and went back to the edge of the terrace, looking into the darkness that hid the vast river. “Are you going to report me to the university?”

  She had her back to me, but I shook my head before I said, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She asked it before turning to look at me.

  I said, “Because I want you to help me find him, and also because I don’t believe you did anything wrong. If there are rules that stop people who love each other from being together, however much sense those rules make, they are wrong.”

  “My God, it’s human.”

  “Very. Now tell me what happened.”

  She looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. You didn’t deserve it.”

  I waited.

  “We went home, to my place. West 155th.”

  “That’s some pretty expensive real estate.”

  She smiled. “We are well paid at Columbia, but not that well paid. I inherited it from my father. He was a very smart realtor.”

  “In California.”

  She took a deep breath and sighed noisily. “You are one hard son of a bitch. Are you cross examining me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Yes, I was born and grew up in California. My parents broke up and he expanded east. He bought and sold properties in Cali, and also in New York. He was a very rich man. I liked him. I applied to universities in New York because I wanted to be near him, got my degree from Berkeley, did my thesis with Columbia and was lucky enough to be able to stay on.”

  “OK. So you went home together. What happened next?”

  She spread her hands, looking a little exasperated. “We made scrambled eggs, drank tequila, fooled around, went to bed. I had an almighty hangover in the morning. I didn’t come ’round till about eleven. When I woke up, he was gone.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “I was pretty mad. Coming on top of the way he’d reacted when I broke up with him, it was a bit of a slap in the face.” She shrugged. “On top of my hangover, I didn’t feel much like talking to him. I eventually called him in the afternoon, but his phone was switched off. It’s stayed that way all week.”

  “You didn’t notify anyone?”

  She looked at me like I was stupid. “Come on! Get real! ‘When was the last time you saw him, Dr. Salcedo?’ ‘Oh, that would be when he was screwing me in my bed, officer.’”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Point taken.”

  She sighed again. “I’m sorry. It’s had me pretty stressed out. The fact is, he had been acting a bit…” She looked around, searching for the word. “Well, I guess he’d been acting pretty emotional lately. I knew he had a sister, but he never talked about her, or the rest of his family. But he talked about family all the time, as a concept, an ideal. He had started talking about Mexico all the time, too. It became a pain in the ass, to be honest. And his mood would swing like crazy from being really happy and carefree to deep gloom in a matter of a fraction of a second.”

  I went to take a drink and saw my glass was empty. I rested it in my lap and asked, “How so?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. We’d be talking about anything at all—a movie, a lecture he’d been to, a book he’d read, anything at all. And you have to remember this guy was positive energy incarnate. He was always smiling. When I tell you he smiled in his sleep, I am not being figurative. He had boundless, positive energy. He just got one hell of a kick out of simply being alive. As long as I had known him, that’s what he was like. Then, in the last month or so, end of May to end of June, he started getting these sudden, catastrophic drops. Like I say, we’d be talking, laughing, having a ball, and suddenly, whoomph! His face would change, his whole demeanor. He would sag and go into a long, protracted silence. Nothing you could say or do would bring him out of it.”

  “Did he talk? Say anything?”

  “Not often. Sometimes he’d make these terrible kinds of existential, nihilistic statements about how everything was pointless. How there was no enduring identity, no soul, no god, and therefore no meaning. Without meaning, life was pointless. That kind of stuff.”

  I sighed and stood, holding out my hand for her glass. “The antithesis of his normal behavior and thinking.”

  “Absolutely. The exact opposite. Are you kicking me out or offering me another drink?”

  I smiled. “I’m offering you a drink because you’re behaving yourself.”

  She grinned, then laughed and handed me her glass. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  I took the glasses inside and started fixing her another vodka martini while she leaned in the doorway, watching me. As I dropped in the ice, I asked her, “Did you ever discuss his mood swings with him? Suggest a therapist?”

  She crossed her arms and nodded. “Of course. The problem was, he did
n’t remember them. It was as though he blanked out while he was in that state.”

  “Other people must have noticed it.”

  “Sure, but nobody ever got close enough to him to discuss it with him.”

  She came over and took the drink from my hand.

  I said, “What about Zack and Hattie, that crowd?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. Perhaps you should ask them. They may be able to give you more information than I can.”

  I studied her face a moment. She was frowning at me, like she was wondering why I was looking at her that way. Finally, I smiled and nodded, and poured myself another drink.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I suppose if he had gone back to Mexico, his sister would have contacted you.”

  I turned to face her, leaning my hip against the sideboard, and nodded slowly, like I was thinking.

  She went on, “I worry he might have done something, hurt himself. Do you think perhaps you should contact the hospitals, or the police?”

  “That will probably be my next step.”

  Her eyes were very bright, the whites very white and the dark centers almost black. She looked drawn, worn out with anxiety, but her skin, instead of being pale and pasty, was flushed, taut. Her face was extraordinary. A strand of black hair fell down beside her cheek. We stared at each other for a very long moment. She started to speak several times, but stopped each time, then finally said, “I have been so worried. It’s only been a week, but it feels like an eternity. I have had no idea which way to turn, what to do. It’s been a relief to tell somebody, and get it off my chest.” I didn’t say anything, and after a moment, she added, “It has been a very lonely week.”

  I wanted to tell her I was married, that I loved my wife, that I could not be unfaithful to her. But my mouth was seized shut and all I could do was stare into her face. She took a step toward me, reached out with her hand and placed it on my chest. When I spoke, my voice was thick.

  “Doctor…”

  Her answer was almost a whisper. “Lucia…”