She answered on the first ring: “Hello?”
The sound of her voice choked up Charlie’s throat. He knew immediately, too late, that he couldn’t speak to her. He had nothing to say but lies.
“Hello?” she said again.
It wasn’t just the lying; there was more to it than that. He was like a character in a time-travel story, who could move through different epochs and observe, but enter none. He had traveled back in time, all the way back to Blake Wrightman.
“Hello? Hello? Who is this? Why do you keep—”
Charlie hung up, leaving his palm print in sweat on the receiver.
He walked back through the restaurant, almost out the front door before remembering he was a customer. He returned to his table, where the food had arrived. He asked for the check.
“Is something wrong?” asked the waitress.
“No, I—” Charlie stopped himself; his speech sounded strangled. To him and to the waitress: she was staring openly at him now. “Not feeling well,” Charlie said. A lie. He saw himself at that moment naked and revealed to this stranger. He’d been a liar for twenty-two years, a denizen of the unhealthy world portrayed in the $250 painting above his head. He was sick of it.
“Would you like a doggie bag?” the waitress said.
No. Yes. What difference did it make? Charlie nodded. The waitress removed the plates, returned with doggie bag and bill. She didn’t hover but didn’t go far, either, until he had paid. “Hope you feel better,” she said as he left.
Out on the street Charlie took a deep breath. Then he walked back to the campus, dropping his sun-dried dinner into a trash can at the wrought-iron gate.
Night was falling now, and it was quiet. Charlie could hear soft sounds from far away: a guitar, a laugh, a ball smacking into a glove. But it was too dark for playing catch; that last must have been imagined.
Charlie wandered the campus until it was fully dark. The heavy clouds had covered the sky. There was no moon or stars. A breeze quickened in the west, blew harder. Charlie stopped walking. He stood in the shadows behind the Ecostudies Center.
Charlie waited there, waited for someone to stroll past or shine a light or cough in the darkness. None of this happened. He moved forward, knelt in the grass, felt for the square ground-level hatch, found it. The hatch opened at the side and was fastened by two simple bolts. There was no lock. He drew the bolts and opened the hatch. He listened once more for human sounds, heard none, and squeezed inside. His hands explored the earthen floor, encountered a cement piling. Down here at the foundation, nothing had changed. Charlie pulled the hatch closed, once more in the darkness of the crawl space under the house by the chapel.
Charlie took out the Catamount Bar and Grille matches and lit one. In the unsteady globe of yellow light it made, he saw the gardener’s coiled hose, watering cans, a spade, a hoe, and two flats of pink flowers he didn’t recognize. Beyond that, darkness. He blew out the match and crawled forward on his belly.
The floor felt damp at first, then dry, as before. After a minute or two, Charlie paused, reached for the matches, lit one. Ahead he saw a small pile of cement blocks. Three of them, to be exact. His heart beat faster; he could feel it against the earth. He blew out the match, crept forward, his right hand extended. It touched the nearest block. Charlie felt again for the matches. At that moment a footstep sounded on the floor, directly above him. Charlie froze.
Something squeaked overhead, a swivel chair perhaps. A second footstep drummed once on the floor. Then footsteps began moving, back and forth, back and forth. Charlie thought he heard a groan. After that came a man’s voice, intimately close and distinct: “I’ve got to think.” Something squeaked again. There was a sigh. Then silence.
Charlie lay without moving in the crawl space, his hand on the edge of the cement block. Time passed, whole minutes surely. When he could wait no more, Charlie reached for the matches, monitoring every movement. He lit one. The snick of the match head on the striking surface sounded like the cracking of a whip. Charlie lay still, not breathing, the match burning down between his fingers. Something—a spider?—ran quickly across the back of his neck, paused, bit him. He did nothing about it. It bit him again. Above, there was only silence. Charlie reached behind his neck, pressed hard. He crushed a hard little body and dampness spread across his palm.
He crawled forward a few more inches, examined the blocks. A pyramid, two at the base, one on top. The match burned his fingertips. He dropped it. It went out, giving off a last invisible plume of smoke that curled up into his nose.
Charlie twisted sideways, felt for the topmost block, got both hands on it. In that position he could use none of the strength of his legs, back, or even upper arms. With just his wrists and hands, he raised the block off the pile and lowered it to the ground behind his head. Quiet, Charlie boy, quiet and slow. But the blocks scraped together just the same. How loudly? As loud as shifting tectonic plates on a fault line, as soft as batting eyelashes? Charlie didn’t know. He listened for sounds from above and heard none, no footsteps, no groans, no sighs.
He felt for the two remaining blocks, pushed one a foot or two away, dragged the second in the other direction. He listened again. Silence. Then, with his fingernails, he began scraping at the earth in front of him. Moving bits of earth at a time, he dug a small depression, an inch or two deep, a foot or two in diameter. Nothing more was necessary. The tip of his index finger touched something man-made, knew what it was: a buckle, a brass buckle.
Charlie lit one last match. Lying in the depression, the depression he’d now dug for the second time in twenty-two years, was a knapsack, the kind found in army surplus stores. It was coated in mold, slick and dirt colored. Charlie ran his thumbnail across it and saw it was still khaki underneath. If biodegradable, it was degrading slowly: Malik’s backpack.
Charlie stuck the match in the loose earth he’d shifted. With both hands free he drew the pack toward him, feeling the weight inside, and unfastened the buckle.
Charlie looked inside. Down in the shadows of the pack lay coils of insulated wire, a stick not much bigger than a cigar tube, a rusted alarm clock. “Big Ben” was gone, all except the second B. He checked the red wire, saw—yes!—how it was wrapped all around the electrical tape. He’d made a symbolic bomb, as he’d thought, a bomb that could never explode, could never hurt a little boy, could never bring his mother to her knees, could never make a father cry. This was nothing but the raw material for a bomb, added, it was true, to the idea of bombing. But someone else’s idea.
The match went out. Charlie lay in the crawl space, the bomb in his hands, his heart beating against the earth. His personal Big Bang, the beginning of the universe of Charlie Ochs: he hadn’t understood it at all. The first roll of thunder sounded in the distance.
23
“Is this part of the plan?” Svenson asked.
“What are you talking about?” Goodnow said. He could no longer cope with the allusive, the roundabout; he was in too much pain for anything but precision and hard fact. Signing out of the hospital wasn’t the same as being cured.
“Him flipping out, or whatever this is,” said Svenson.
Goodnow had no answer. They stood like medieval sentries on the crenellated platform of the campanile. Lightning flashed overhead, a crooked white stick with spiky branches, illuminating for a moment the rear of the Ecostudies Center and Charlie Ochs crawling out from underneath. He straightened, glanced up, directly at the campanile, although he couldn’t possibly have seen them, then vanished with the lightning.
“Did you see the look on his face?” asked Svenson.
Goodnow had: wild and strange. Maybe it was just the lightning. He hoped so: the only other explanation that came to mind involved Charlie blowing up the building again.
“Follow him,” he said, and Svenson was gone.
Goodnow descended the stone steps that wound inside the campanile, stopping twice to rest. He checked his watch, hoping it had been four hours since his last pill, so
he could have another, or even three and a half, which would be close enough. But it wasn’t even three. He took one anyway. The pain in his gut didn’t go away, but after a minute or two it changed shape. He felt a sense of well-being. That was just the morphine. It was gone by the time he reached the Ecostudies Center.
Goodnow shone his flashlight on the hatch, opened it and bent over to crawl through. The cancer didn’t want to be shoved around like that and let him know right away. He heard a gasp, his own, and found himself leaning against the building, biting the sleeve of his jacket. He took a few breaths, shallow, unobtrusive, inoffensive. The cancer gave tacit approval. Goodnow again approached the open hatch. This time he didn’t bend but went to his knees like a supplicant, then leaned forward onto his hands and went through the hatchway. He bumped his head, not hard, but the slight pain that resulted stood on the shoulders of a giant, and he almost screamed aloud. He wished that there was a bomb, and that it would explode now.
But there was no explosion, and after a minute or two Goodnow lowered himself to his belly. That reshaped the pain again, but didn’t make it worse. He shone his light, saw gardening supplies, and farther away a few cement blocks. He crawled toward them, digging at the earth with his toes wriggling his body. He reached the blocks. There were three of them, lying together: just blocks. He pushed one of them with his hands, hard as he could. It didn’t budge.
The effort caused a funny feeling in his stomach, not pain, almost a release. He rested, his cheek against the cool earth. Something bit the tip of his nose. He started to cry.
After a while Goodnow twisted around, shone his light around the crawl space. He saw nothing but cement blocks and gardening supplies. No new bomb, no explanation, no meaning. What was Charlie doing? Tripping down Memory Lane, as Svenson had said at first? Flipping out, as he seemed to believe now? Goodnow didn’t know. He only knew that Charlie had failed to take the logical first step.
Goodnow backed out of the hatch. He got his hands on the top of the door, pulled himself up. The front of his shirt was wet. He touched it. Wet and sticky. Goodnow unfastened the buttons, shone the light on himself. A yellow, viscous liquid was leaking through the almost-healed holes where the stitches had been. Goodnow buttoned his shirt, closed the hatch, moved on.
· · ·
Charlie caught the last flight to Toronto. It was almost midnight when he stood at the front door of 192 Howland; the house was dark. Charlie knocked. No one came. He pressed the buzzer, heard it buzz, knocked again. Then he walked around to the back.
The mountain bike was locked to the porch; its handlebars gleamed under the pink night sky of the city. Charlie climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. Charlie wanted answers. He knocked again, hard: pounding more than knocking. The door swung open.
Charlie walked inside. He stepped on something soft, flesh-like. Running his hand along the wall, he found a switch, turned on the overhead light. He was standing on a shelled lobster tail.
The rest of the creature lay with a cut lemon on the table. The table was set for one: one plate, one shell cracker, one lobster fork, one glass, one bottle of white wine, open but full. Someone had cleaned up the mess that Malik had made and that Charlie had made worse. Everything was tidy, as though the maid had just left, tidy except for the lobster tail on the floor. Charlie touched the wine bottle. It was warm.
He walked into the next room, switched on the light. It might have been the dining room, but there was nothing in it except wall-to-wall carpet and a fax machine. Charlie kept going, through other empty rooms—all carpeted, all with telephones, answering machines, or faxes in various combinations, but otherwise empty. He went up to the second floor and saw more of the same. He climbed the stairs to the third floor.
There was a narrow hall at the top of the stairs. At one end was a study with a desk, a chair, file cabinets. At the other was a bedroom with a double bed, neatly made, a television, a closet full of clothes. In the middle was a bathroom with a shower, a Jacuzzi, and a hanging fern, the only living thing he’d seen in the house. Charlie opened the mirrored cabinet, saw razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, foot powder, tweezers. He returned to the kitchen, shutting off the lights as he went down.
Charlie eyed the dinner on the table, the full bottle of wine, the lobster tail on the floor. Dinner was served, but where was the diner? Perhaps he’d forgotten something, had gone out to the store, would be back any moment. Milk, for example. Malik drank milk, straight from the carton, like a man with an ulcer. And in his absence the cat had jumped up on the table and dragged off the lobster tail. Charlie opened the refrigerator. There were three cartons of milk inside and nothing else. And he saw no sign of a cat—no litter, no dish.
There were two closed doors in the kitchen. Charlie opened one. A closet: brooms, mops, vacuum cleaner. He tried the other door. It opened on a descending staircase. Charlie turned on the light and went down.
He was in a one-room basement: gas furnace, cement floor, brick walls, a wooden tennis racquet, washer, dryer, and a freezer big enough for storing sides of beef. He opened the dryer. Empty. He tried the washer, found clothing, slightly damp and twisted, as though it had been there overnight, still waiting for transfer to the dryer. But what did that mean? Who didn’t forget about the clothes in the washing machine sometimes?
Charlie picked up the tennis racquet, tapped the strings against his palm. They were brittle; one broke immediately. Then, because he could think of nothing else, he raised the lid of the freezer.
There was an unclothed male body inside, lying on his back in a pool of red ice. It was Malik. He had two little round holes in his chest. One of his arms was twisted behind him; he was holding something. Charlie reached down for it, but Malik’s hand was stuck in the red ice. Charlie tugged at the stiff, cold wrist. The hand came free, with the sound that frozen chicken breasts make when they’re torn from the package. Malik was clutching a corkscrew with the cork still attached, a poor choice to counter a gun. Charlie closed the freezer.
The room returned to normal. A normal basement with the normal appliances. Think. Shouldn’t there be blood, on the floor, the sides of the freezer, perhaps the stairs? There was none. Had Malik climbed into the freezer before being shot? And if not?
Charlie opened the washer again, took out the clothes. He found a pair of men’s underwear, a pair of socks, a summer suit, a shirt, a tie with sunbursts. The Birkenstocks were at the bottom. Charlie examined the clothing, saw two little round holes in the suit jacket, two in the shirt, one in the tie. He put everything back in the washer, closed the lid, went upstairs, shut off the lights, left by the back door.
Tidy. No loose ends, except for the lobster tail and the question that he had come to ask and that remained unanswered: what caused the explosion at the ROTC? The answer might make him free—not technically free, the way he would be if he kept his half of the deal with Mr. G, but free in his own mind. The list of people who might know the answer had shrunk to one. Now he wanted Rebecca to be alive, and looking for her had nothing to do with the deal. That put him and Mr. G on the same side. It was an unpleasant thought.
· · ·
“Where are you?” Svenson said, sounding peevish and tired.
“Coming,” Goodnow said into the portable phone. The taxi driver glanced in the rearview mirror.
“The lights are all off again,” Svenson said. “I don’t know what the fuck he’s—Hold it. He just came out.”
Pause. Goodnow heard Svenson breathing. He looked out the window, saw a colossal tower that might have been designed on another planet for an unknown purpose. The driver glanced at him again, followed the direction of his gaze.
“Something else, eh?” he said, his voice full of civic pride.
Goodnow ignored him.
Svenson breathed a few more times. He breathed with his mouth open, Goodnow recalled; a disgusting habit. It suddenly occurred to him that Svenson might have fallen asleep.
“Well?” he said.
“Well what?” said Svenson, awake and unhappy.
Silence. The taxi turned north, away from the tower and into the city. Goodnow checked his watch. Not even two hours since the last pill.
Svenson spoke. “Shit,” he said.
“What?”
“He’s … leaving.”
“Then go,” Goodnow told him.
“You’re my mentor,” Svenson said. Click.
Ten minutes later Goodnow was standing outside the dark house at 192 Howland. He knew that it was owned by a limited partnership called Annex Investments. He knew that the president of Annex Investments was Mervin H. Koharski, that the house had one resident, Koharski, a Canadian citizen and registered voter, with no arrests and no criminal record, unwanted by any of the police forces included in the Interpol net. What he didn’t know was why Charlie had visited the house, twice. He swallowed another pill.
Two minutes later Goodnow was in the house. Five minutes after that he was down in the basement—if there was a basement he always checked it first—studying the tableau in the freezer. The fact of death, the dead body, didn’t move him at all. He’d seen lots of dead bodies; he’d soon be dead himself. “It’s not going to work,” he said aloud, to himself, to the corpse.
It was over. Charlie was out of control. Why was he surprised? The man had killed before. Now he was improvising another violent scheme. Perhaps that was his customary reaction to pressure. It was time to pull the plug, play it by the book, cut his losses, surrender to all the bureaucratic clichés. Goodnow pictured Hugo Klein’s smiling face and felt empty inside, empty except for the cancer, growing like a Gerber baby. He slammed the freezer shut.
The Gerber baby didn’t like that, wasn’t pleased when he acted like his old self. It knocked Goodnow to the floor, bent him into the fetal position, made him rock back and forth. “Please, oh, please,” Goodnow said. He fumbled for his pills, got one in his mouth.
After a while, he could stand. He was leaking again through the scar. Leak, he told himself, I don’t care. It was over.
Revolution #9 Page 18
