Harry stared out the windshield of the van at a large flock of noisy birds moving south from uptown. They tilted over the East River like a single giant wing, so black that it stood out against the evening sky, and then the flock came apart and melted into the lattice of the Brooklyn Bridge that stretched out around him.
Hours ago, when he’d left the diner, Harry had returned to Brooklyn and picked up the rental van. Richard Hall would be delivering the Jones tonight, but it was Geiger’s SOP that Harry have a vehicle on hand at all sessions- another example of crossing of t ’s and dotting of i ’s as a way to keep the outside world’s powers of chaos in check. Then Harry had stopped back home, given Melissa a dozen of Lily’s favorite CDs, and spent a few hours on the couch watching his sister while she sat cross-legged in a chair, fingering a button on her blouse. He had tried a few questions-“Lily, do you want something to eat?” and “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” and “Do you remember my name, sis?”-but she responded only once, to his last query, saying:
“I remember all the names. I know them.”
Harry took the bridge off-ramp and headed crosstown toward Ludlow Street. He loved the feel of the city at this end. The air smelled different than uptown-spicier, more exotic. The song of the street had a sweeter pitch, the light seemed softer, and when a job was finished he could walk just two blocks to the tiny dim sum place on Division Street and sit down to a feast for twenty bucks. Best deal in town.
Last week he’d received an e-mail informing him that Lily’s nut would go up to one hundred and ten thousand a year, so tonight’s asap was a godsend. He had also negotiated top dollar with Richard Hall-thirty-five grand. Geiger always left that part of the business to him and he’d gotten good at it. Who could have guessed?
On the June day in 1999 when Harry had walked out of the Times Building to find Geiger waiting for him on the sidewalk with a business proposition, Harry had no idea what he’d be getting into, and no way to make a decision based on a financial forecast. In the end, he made a life-altering choice based on his instinctive response to Geiger’s matter-of-fact presentation. “I am going into a new line of work,” Geiger had said. “Illegal. I need a partner. You’ll get twenty-five percent of the profits.” As Geiger described his vocation, Harry wondered: What was the going rate for torture? How do you build a clientele? The research part would be a snap, his forte, but the human carting might prove challenging. Forget, for a moment, the moral and legal aspects. Could he do it? Was that in him? He let the exhilaration in his chest provide the answer.
Harry pulled the van up to the gate of the lot next to the Ludlow Street session house and checked his watch. Hall was due with Matheson in fifteen minutes. He got out, unlocked the heavy-gauge gate, and pushed it open. As he was about to turn back to the van, he felt the presence of someone coming up behind him. He froze, and silently cursed his carelessness-why had he left the Louisville Slugger on the van’s floor? Slowly he turned.
A ragged redwood of a black man stood before him, wearing a tattered New York Knicks sweatshirt and pants of a blotched, now indistinguishable color. His clothes hung on thick, broad bones, and Harry saw the glare of mean hunger in his bottomless eyes. Harry’s mind measured the steps to the van’s door. Seven, maybe eight. A tricky maneuver to pull out the bat and swing for the fences. Trickier if the guy was agile-Harry never could hit a curveball. But if it came to it, he’d die trying. Nobody was ever going to beat on him again.
A hand the size of an oven mitt came out from behind the man’s back. The upturned palm was desiccated and deeply furrowed.
“Gimme somethin’, man,” the guy said, his voice sepulchral. “Five bucks.”
Harry realized he wasn’t breathing; he inhaled. “Shouldn’t sneak up on people, man,” he said. “Not cool.”
“I’ll send you a fucking letter next time. Now goddamn gimme somethin’.” His pupils flared with molten emotion. “C’mon, motherfucker!”
“Motherfucker?” Harry said. “Hey-do I owe you something?”
The man’s great paws grabbed the lapels of Harry’s sport jacket and pulled him in close. Harry’s nostrils bristled at the thick, sour smell of unwashed flesh.
“Fuck you very much,” the man said.
An airy giggle came from somewhere very near, and then a small, shiny-eyed face peeked out from behind the man’s tree-trunk legs. The girl wore a soiled orange jumpsuit and sneakers with the toes wrapped in frayed duct tape, and the gap between her front teeth blinked at Harry when she grinned. She couldn’t have been more than five. If Harry believed in God, he would have sworn she was an angel.
The girl looked up at him. “Yeah,” she said. “Fuck you very, very much.”
“Don’t you be cursing, Laneesha,” the man said, but his eyes stayed on Harry, who was losing a battle to suppress a grin.
“What’s Laneesha mean?” Harry asked.
“Fuck if I know, man.”
“Pretty name.”
“You like it? Gimme five bucks, you can have it.”
“Okay,” Harry said.
The man squinted at the answer, and let go of Harry. “Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Harry went into his pocket and took out a money clip. He thumbed through the folded bills and frowned.
“No fives. Have to take a twenty.”
He pulled one free and held it out. The man snatched it with a thumb and forefinger, stuck it deep down in a pocket, and took a moment to reappraise his benefactor.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
“You’re a weird guy,” the man said. “Cool, but weird.”
“Doubtful about the cool part.” Harry looked down at the little girl. “You and I have the same name,” he said.
Her brow crinkled with three undulating lines of confusion. “Your name’s not Laneesha!” she said.
“It is now,” said Harry, grinning. “I just bought it.”
She reached up and let her tiny hand disappear inside the giant’s. Turning, they walked down the street. It had started to drizzle, and the streetlights threw shadows everywhere, an irregular crisscross pattern like a huge net laid down across the wet concrete.
Harry hopped back inside the van, drove into the lot, and pulled up to the wall of the session house. He parked beside the gray canvas-sided awning that extended eight feet from the building, blocking the view of the side entrance door from the windows of adjacent buildings and passersby.
Drops of rain on the windshield were momentarily set aglow by a passing wash of light. Harry turned and watched a dark green van pull up to the open gate and stop, softly idling. He got out, stepped into the flood of the headlights, and motioned the vehicle forward like an airport gate man coaxing in a jet. Then he directed the van to pull under the canvas awning. The engine died, the door opened, and a man stepped out with an attache case and strolled toward Harry, headlights trimming the edges of his stocky silhouette with a backlit aura.
“Harry?” the man said.
“Right. Mr. Hall?”
“Yes.”
As he neared, Hall’s silhouette morphed into detail. His gray suit looked off the rack. His features were middle-American bland-the face of someone sitting in a Wichita diner or an office cubicle in Des Moines. You wouldn’t notice him in a crowd, but face to face Harry could see his busy eyes, always moving. Hall was one of those people who could look straight at you and see everything around you at the same time, his gaze shifting tiny degrees, scanning and rescanning the area like motion detectors getting signals from an internal command center.
He held out a ringless hand and Harry shook it. Harry’s fingers felt like they were caught in a vise.
“We set?” Hall asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s do this.”
They headed for the van. Hall clearly had no interest in small talk, and that was fine by Harry. He could never ignore the absurdity of talking about the Mets or the traffic as a lead-in to torture. The worst ones were those who wanted to talk about Geiger, and what he did, and how he did it. Harry spent a lot of time building a wall around his
