"Yes, as we went over numbers and sales."
"I never dealt with anyone else?"
"On occasion one or two other consultants, but they were all friendly and cursory relationships."
"Business rivalries? Jealousy?"
"Not towards you. You did very well here, but so far as your consultation work, you were low man on the totem pole. Committed but not competitive."
No wonder Cryer had gotten so fat. Sitting at home, on the computer all day long, never getting any exercise. Showing no serious ambition. Annie had told him he was always at his daughter’s school events, taking her to practice, going to the parent-teacher meetings. He’d been a house-husband.
"How was I as an employee?"
"First-rate, otherwise we wouldn’t have kept you on."
"How long did I work for Intel?"
"Twelve years."
All of his daughter’s life. Had he taken the consulting job so he could stay home with her?
"How was business?" he asked Doyle.
"Never better. Losing you was a great blow to us. Are you ready to come back to work?"
It almost made Cryer smile, imagining what it would be like to sit in front of a computer, barely looking at the screen, and letting his hands work away without him, as he toyed with figures, unaware of what his job was, what he was selling, what he was consulting about, who his associates and colleagues and buyers might be.
"No," Cryer said. "I think I need a little more time."
"You’re always welcome here. You’re part of the Intel Six Securities Inc. family."
"I appreciate that."
"Let me know if there’s anything I can ever do to help."
"I will."
Doyle shook Cryer’s hand, led him to the door, patted him on the shoulder and then dug his fingers in gently, massaging a little, the way a friend who can’t articulate deep emotion might try to express himself through touch.
Wandering past the cubicles, Cryer looked over the tiny walls and seeing dozens of well-dressed men and women on phones and busily working on the computers. He tried to imagine what kind of job he did at home that was significantly different than what all these people were doing here.
He made it out into the parking lot and turned back to the shining glass building, watching the sun gleam and riot across every window.
But if he hadn’t been at work, where had he been coming back from?
Someplace he went to often enough to form a pattern. A pattern that had been used by the killer.
Cryer checked Annie’s list. He’d been so eager to begin his mission that he hadn’t bothered to read through it all. Beneath the address for Intel Six, his wife’s flower shop, his daughter’s middle-school, and below that was the name of a church.
ST. IGNATIUS OF GOD.
224 Jones St. Basement.
And then, in a hesitant scrawl, as if she wasn’t sure she should share his own secret with him:
A.A.
22
Alcoholics Anonymous. He’d had to sneak cigarettes. Had to cram fast food down as quickly as possible. Burdened with guilt and regret, certain addictions rose within him to counter others.
And Annie knew about it how? She’d only offered him the coffee, had kept the bottle of scotch close to herself. Maybe a fellow member? She hit the sauce pretty hard.
Or had Cryer or his wife confided in her? Not all that anonymous in the long run.
His body knew the way to the church. It wasn’t far from Intel. Cryer had to wonder if he’d been a religious man–if he and his family had attended mass every Sunday or if it was just a place for him to wrestle with his failures alongside others with the same troubles. He tried to see it. Going up before the crowd, admitting certain sins and shortcomings, telling them he’d been dry for a week, a month, a year and a half. Then raiding the jelly-filled donuts, jamming two at a time in his mouth.
Cryer thought that A.A. members went to different meetings at different times on different days. Was he such a creature of habit that he had a set schedule for when he went to the meetings? Is that how the killer had been able to note his comings and goings? It was another weakness.
How could he have run across and incurred the wrath of a psychopath there?
Because he’d scarfed all the donuts? Drank all the tepid coffee? Someone just didn’t like his face when he went up there and said, "Hi, I’m Freddy the Switchblade, and I’m an alcoholic."
Hi Freddy!
Was there an Overeaters Anonymous? Smokers Anonymous? What other petty vices did he possess, and which possessed him? Nothing meaningful, probably just ridiculous fatass shit. Internet gambling? Skin mags? Soft-core cable movies? Computer golf?
St. Ignatius was enormous and atmospheric, with an ancient stone appearance, the church having been one of the earliest erected edifices in the city. There was a plaque out front that said so.
A javelin fence surrounded the front grounds, which opened into a small and very well-tended garden. Cryer tried the huge wooden front doors and was surprised to find them locked. Weren’t churches always supposed to be open so the faithful could come in and pray and mourn and light candles and confess and swallow crackers?
As his thoughts twisted along that direction he remembered that the votive candles were now automated. You put in some change and pressed a button and an electric candle flashed on instead. No more waxy build-up. The man he’d once been seemed to be incensed by the change. Cryer didn’t give a shit.
He was about to step back into the street when he saw the rectory situated about forty yards away. He turned and proceeded towards it, a niggling worry trying to exert itself upon him from somewhere deep. He stopped and shut his eyes and tried to focus on it, and thought it might have something to do with the question of, now that he was a different man, did he also have a new soul?
Had the incident resulted in some kind of act of expiation?
He came around the corner of the small building and nearly walked into a pile of brush.
The priest was raking the little lawn around the rectory, scratching out some crabgrass patches. He wore dark slacks, a loose-fitting cotton shirt, and an unzipped blue windbreaker, nothing showing him to be a priest except that he still had the collar on. Cryer wondered about that. Why the guy, clearly off the clock and doing his own thing, dressed way down, would still wear the collar even while doing yard work.
"Hiya," Cryer said.
The priest looked thankful for the break. "Can I help you?"
"Maybe. I’m sorry to bother you."
"It’s no bother at all. I’m Father Bruno."
Something else that snagged Cryer’s attention. Why did some priests give you their last names and others give you their first? Father Callahan, Father O’Murphy, Father Jim, Father Tom.
Why all these distractions? Nothing mattered but what he cried for, what he bled for. "I just wanted to know about...the A.A. meetings," Cryer said.
"We meet in the basement here three times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 7:30pm."
Making sure that if somebody felt like they were going to off the rails they could immediately get in on a meeting before the weekend. Or else right after fucking up all of Saturday and Sunday nights. "Are you in charge of the meetings?"
"Yes, I am."
Father Bruno stared into Cryer’s eyes, grinning amiably, with a tenderness reserved for those one is trying to comfort. He either hadn’t known Cryer before or just didn’t recognize him. Cryer figured he could use that. Maybe come at things from a different direction, but still digging like a dog.
"A friend of mine used to attend the meetings about a year ago. Were you here then?"
A ripple of pain passed over the priest’s face, and then he smiled again, this time a bit more contritely. "I was here. I was assisting Father Antonio at the time, and losing my own war with the bottle. I started attending meetings, sitting far in the back corners, trying to hide my face in the basement of my own church, afraid someone from the
congregation would recognize me. I hadn’t quite figured out how things were supposed to work. I was too worried about my vanity rather than the state of my life and my faith. It took a few months before I was comfortable enough to actually get up in front of the group, before I was self-aware enough to realize I truly needed help." Father Bruno laid his rake up against the side of a statue of St. Francis. "And your name?"
"Abe Fishbaum."
They shook hands. "You say your friend came around about a year ago, Abe? I hope the experience helped him."
"I can’t attest to that. He was murdered shortly thereafter."
"How dreadful."
"The police reached a dead end in their investigations, and I’ve decided to do what I can to find the person responsible. I was hoping I could ask someone a few questions."
"Certainly. Ask away. I’ll try to answer if I can."
"It was very big in the news at the time. My friend, his wife and daughter were all slain by an intruder. Do you remember the man I’m talking about?"
"What was his name?"
How to dodge a question like that. "He was obese, used to eat all the donuts, and was angry about the votive candles going automatic."
"It might be easier for me to remember if you tell me his name."
"Well, it’s alcoholics anonymous, isn’t it?"
"His first name at least. And if the case was in the papers and on the news, then–"
"He worked over at Intel, maybe came in with some of those folks, if you know any of them. They eat a lot of jumbo shrimp over there."
Father Bruno cocked his head and let out a small huh. A short breathy sound, but full of implication. "He couldn’t have been much of a friend if you can only describe him but don’t know his name."
"I know it," Cryer said, "or I once did. I just can’t remember it. I just can’t say it."
"You can’t say it?"
"No."
It was the truth. And any man trained to deal with the weak, the irresolute, the crestfallen, the unstable, the broken, the impaired, the sinners and the sinned upon and sinned against, who himself was an alcoholic, shouldn’t take Cryer to too much task.
"Huh. I don’t understand that," Father Bruno said, clearly interested now, one of those guys who is bored to shit seeing the same faces day in and out, listening to their common transgressions, their average anguish. "But let’s put it aside for now. Are you in need of solace? Do you need to confess anything?"
An expected. You start acting weird and mentioning murders and a priest is going to want to get you into the hot box and lay it out on the ear of Christ and try to get you to turn yourself in to the cops.
"No, I’m not here to confess, I’m here to find out if you noticed anyone or anything strange about the A.A. meetings from a year or so ago. Someone who didn’t belong. A fight, threats, anyone who might have come to you with significant troubles. Serious mental ills. I’m talking about someone who might have frightened you."
"As I admitted, I had my own problems at the time. I’m afraid I was more caught up in those than I was in helping my congregation or the people at the meetings. But from what I recall, no, there wasn’t anything that stands out in my mind a year ago concerning fights or threats. You say your friend was murdered?"
"He and his entire family."
"I’m sorry for your loss."
"It wasn’t my loss, it was someone else’s."
"Who do you mean?"
"Let’s table that too." Cryer couldn’t find an adequate tactic. St. Francis stared at him sorrowfully, the statue’s face weather-pitted, the stone eyes pretty damning for a saint. "Maybe Father Antonio would know?"
"I’m sorry to say he passed away almost six months ago. Cancer."
"Did he front the meetings initially?"
"No, but the man who did will probably be there tonight. He still takes a lead role in the group. I can tell you that his first name is Larry. Maybe he’ll remember something that might help you."
"Thanks, I think I’ll stick around."
Thinking the whole time, Maybe it’s him. Maybe Father Bruno here is a part-time knife-wielding maniac. Sexually repressed, doesn’t diddle little boys like the normal priests, has to get his rocks off in another way.
Maybe he snuffed my wife and daughter and tried to ice me. Maybe he’s the one I’m going to have to kill.
23
Two hours to go before the A.A. meeting started, so Cryer decided to see if his body knew anywhere else nearby that he should go.
He walked and rounded corners, visited a computer store where he must’ve spent a lot of time before. It was incredibly busy, with bustling patrons elbowing their way through aisles. Mostly kids trying to get in on some new game recently released. A teenage boy was playing it, gyrating and slamming down on buttons, his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth as the screen burst with activity.
Some kind of shoot-‘em-up. You played the good bad guy fighting the bad bad guys. You blasted at each other and had lengthy martial arts battles. You jumped into cars and drove up on sidewalks, followed some hitmen who plowed into schoolchildren and old ladies in wheelchairs. If you managed to kill your enemy you could appropriate his weapons. You gained energy by knocking over a liquor store and stealing six-packs and liquor bottles. You could also use the booze to make Molotov cocktails and lob fiery bombs at the cops.
Cryer took the second player controls and joined in. He did well but kept getting sandbagged by some skateboarding drug dealer who’d ride the curb and trip his man in front of a pack of wild dogs that would tear him to pieces. He kept losing energy and he couldn’t seem to draw his gun in time. It annoyed the hell out of him, especially since the kid playing beside him would let out a high-pitched giggle whenever Cryer’s man hit the ground.
After a few more near misses, he soon discovered how to use the controls to lash out at the skateboarder, knock him clear, and send him flying into the dogs, allowing Cryer to escape and continue on.
It didn’t take much time before Cryer had progressed far enough along to be side by side with the kid. They worked together breaking into a bank, taking hostages, blowing up the vault, and stealing the cash before the other bad guys arrived.
That must be how the makers of this thing market it to the parents’ groups. Look, it teaches your children teamwork.
Without glancing away from the screen, the kid said, "You’re freakin’ good, dude!"
"Yeah, looks that way, eh?"
They managed to keep the game going for forty-five minutes. By then they had a small group of folks surrounding them. Cryer could barely manage to pull himself away from the screen, but it was time to get moving.
He had to go face the priest and the guy named Larry and find out if one of them had murdered his family or knew the person who had.
He dropped the controls and a young boy jumped on them and tried to keep his man going.
Cryer looked down at his powerful hands and thought, So there was something else I used to do when I was sitting around the house, waiting for my daughter to finish school and my wife to come home. Not Internet porn, not online casinos, no cybersex. I sat in a big soft chair and played games all day long.
Hell, he thought. I didn’t have much of a life then either.
24
In the church basement, Cryer sat in the back row of folding chairs watching men drift inside. Some were confident and comfortable there. Others were nervous and even angry. A few were drunk and wandered around in a fog. Fellow A.A. members seemed to expect this and took the arms of the inebriated and led them off to the side of the room where a table sat with coffee, juice, and baked goods.
Father Bruno walked in and spotted Cryer immediately. He stepped over, put his hand out, and sat beside him. Cryer got the feeling that the priest was there with the specific intent of tackling Cryer in case he went shitstorm crazy right there in the basement.
"I’m glad to see you showed up," Father Bruno said.
"I told you I wo
uld."
"A great many people say they will but then bow out."
"I was bowed out for an entire year."
"From the program?"
"From life."
"Ah," Father Bruno said, nodding, still smiling, because what the hell else are you supposed to do except smile. Cryer figured the priest thought Cryer was in the throes of alcoholic dementia and gripped by paranoia. A couple of meetings and some donuts might straighten him right the fuck up.
"I was hoping to talk to Larry," Cryer said. "Can you point him out to me?"
"We’re about to start. Why don’t you wait until after the group breaks up and then we’ll get a chance to talk at length?"
"Sure."
Eventually Larry got up there and did the whole "Hi, my name is..." bit. Cryer studied the man wondering if that was the psycho who’d set him on this course.
Larry stood about five six, with a slight frame, shaved head, well-trimmed beard, with a very controlled and calming energy about him. His voice was deep and vibrant and he knew how to speak distinctly, congenially, like he was talking only to you.
He thanked the folks who’d brought the coffee and cookies. He thanked Father Bruno for allowing them to use the basement of St. Ignatius. He asked for volunteers to stay afterward and help fold all the chairs. He had them all bow their heads as he said a short prayer that didn’t mention God or addiction. A lot of what he’d said so far sounded as if it was rote.
The meeting began.
Cryer sat through fifty minutes of testimonials, listening to men and women talk about how they’d drink at work, drink on duty, drink at home while watching the kids, pass out in pools of vomit and awaken to their three-year-olds wanting to be fed and changed. There were tears; there was some wit and insight.
One of the drunk guys stood up and began to heckle the others> He ranted for ten minutes and got off some good one-liners. Eventually he stumbled off.
One woman discussed her days as a prostitute and how she’d drink with the clients, some of whom were very powerful and famous men. She made veiled references that even Cryer picked up on.
The Nobody Page 5
